Computer/Hard Drive problem

[Crazy_Mack]

So here's the issue.

Having experienced some problems with her computer, my sister's had brought her computer to a computer store to have it worked on a couple months ago, and basically paid them $100+ dollars to have them tell her that the hard-drive is going bad. (Nothing else was done).

So my sister asked me to work on it and try to recover some of the data. Luckily enough, Best Buy just happened to have a sale on 120 GByte hard drives (40 bucks!). So I purchased one of the drives (and a few more for myself) to install in my sister's machine.

When I got her computer, everything seemed to be working normally and I was easily able to back up the important information my sister needed from the drive and burn it to DVD. (Something the computer technician was supposively unable to do due to the drive failure)

At any rate, I installed the new drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows XP (had a spare disk) and made sure all the updates were installed, as well as installing virus and adware/spyware detection software.

Since the old drive seemed to be working fine, I installed it as a slave drive so my sister would still have access to any data that hadn't yet been backed-up. Everything was purring like a kitten when I handed the computer back to her.

Anyway, my sister just called me to say that her computer was having problems again. She noted a little while ago that the old hard-drive disappeared for some reason. But hadn't told me about it since everything else still seemed to be working. But now, the Master hard drive can no longer be accessed, and her computer is unable to boot because of this.

It seems highly unlikely to me that the new hard-drive would suddenly go bad. Is it possible that the problem with the old hard drive is interfering with the new hard drive? Or is it possible that neither drive has a problem and that the drive controller is going out on the motherboard?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[SirPoonga]

It seems highly unlikely to me that the new hard-drive would suddenly go bad. Is it possible that the problem with the old hard drive is interfering with the new hard drive? Or is it possible that neither drive has a problem and that the drive controller is going out on the motherboard?

It could be both.

Try taking the old drive out and seeing what happens.

If it still doesn't work you should be able to get the drive replaced under manufacture's warranty.

How old is the computer?

[AtomSmasher]

If the new harddrive is on the same IDE cable as the old harddrive then it can be causing the problem.  Regardless, disconnect the old one and see what happens.  Another possiblity is it could be a nasty virus, did you do a virus scan the old harddrive or only the new one? 

[Crazy_Mack]

Yeah, It's on the same cable, and yeah all the drives (old and new) were scanned for viruses and spyware.

One thing I should point out, the computer is 400 miles from me right now, so I'm mostly trying to pass on advice to my sister.

Interestingly enough, while I was on the phone with her tonight, her computer booted without a problem even though we didn't do a thing to it. Her old hard-drive still isn't visible, though.

I told her the old hard drive should be removed given there's no sense in having one installed that you can't access.

[SteveJ34]

It could be a short between the chair and the keyboard....

....sorry, couldn't resist.

You can slap me now.

[MustardTent]

The best tool out there to check a drive's status is smartmontools.  Most drives out there support SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System). 

This tool will show you the current status of the harddrive as reported by the drive's firmware.  This is very low level stuff.  It will give you a list of status indicators from the drive, and it will indicate each indicator's current value, threshold, and type (if it's an old age indicator or a pre-failure indicator).  I find this tool invaluable.

It's available for Linux and Windows.

[Harry Potter]

The IDE controller on the MB could be stuffed or not enough power is getting to the drives (faulty power supply?)

Have your tried running the same drives in another PC?

[c64rulez]

Could very much be a faulty IDE cable, or MB soldering gone bad.
It could play tricks on you.

[Harry Potter]

I had an external enclosure for a HD a while back and it showed the same behaviour with hard disks as yours. I eventually put the HD into the PC and ran fine for a month, then I put it into another enclosure and it still works fine.

It looked like the IDE to Firewire was randomly causing the File system to corrupt itself. It's done it to every drive that went in there.

Faulty cable? Not likely. It wouldn't have worked in the first place but I could be wrong. 

[c64rulez]

Always try the most simple solutions first.
Trust me.
I complicate things beyond belief.

And when I say faulty cable, I'm speaking from (bitter) experience.

psssst, where's the car sticker man ?