Get UseNext Client - Free Highspeed Access To 300TB of Videos, Games and Music!
Satellite TV for PC - Access to 3000+ Stations WorldWide! 200+ Premium Channels!

Hard drive gone bad

The most common problems originate rom corruption of the master boot record, FAT, or directory. Those are soft problems which can usually be taken care of ith a combination of tools like fdisk /mbr to refresh the
master boot record followed by a reboot and Norton disk doctor, The most common hardware problems are a bad controller, a bad rive motor, or a bad head mechanism.

1. Can the BIOS see and identify the hard drive correctly? If
it can’t, then the hard drives onboard controller is bad.

2. Does the drive spin and maintain a constant velocity? If it
does, that’s good news. The motor is functioning.

3. If the drive surges and dies, the most likely cause is a
bad controller (assuming the drive is cool). A gate allowing
the current to drive the motor may not be staying open. The
drive needs a new controller.

4. Do you hear a lot of head clatter when the machine is
turned on and initialized (but before the system attempts to
access the hard drive). Head clatter would indicate that the
spindle bearings are sloppy or worn badly. Maybe even lose and
flopping around inside.

5. There is always the possibility that the controller you are
using in the machine has gone south.

1. If the drive spins, try booting to the A> prompt, run Fdisk
and check to see if Fdisk can see a partition on the hard
drive. If Fdisk can see the partition, that means that it can
access the drive and that the controller electronics are
functioning correctly. If there is no head clatter, it may be
just a matter of disk corruption which commonly occurs when a
surge hits you machine and overwhelms the power supply voltage
regulator. It commonly over whelms the system electronics
allowing an EM pulse to wipe out the master boot record, file
allocations table, and primary directory. Fdisk can fix the
master boot record and Norton Disk Doctor can restore the FAT
and Directory from the secondaries.
2. The drive spins but Fdisk can’t see it. Try the drive in
another system and repeat the test to confirm that Fdisk can’t
read through the drives onboard controller. If it sees it in
another system, then your machines hard drive interface is
bad. You can try an upgraded or replacement controller card
like a Promise or CMD Technologies (there are others) in you
machine after disabling the integrated controller in the BIOS,
but if the integrated controller went south, it may just be
symptomatic of further failures and you’d be wise to replace
the motherboard. Trying the drive in another machine also
eliminates the variable that your machines 12 volt power
output being bad

3. If you get head clatter but a constant velocity on the
drive motor (no surging), you might try sticking the hard
drive in the freezer for about 12 hours. This is an old trick
from back in the days of the MFM/ESDI driver era. This can
cause the drive components to shrink enough to make the track
marker align with the tracks. We don’t see that kind of
platter spindle wear much anymore, but back in the old days,
the balancing and bearings weren’t as good. Still, under the
right circumstances, it might help. It would depend on how old
the drive is and how many hours of wear have occurred. You
have to be quick to get your info off the drive when it works.
Back then, the drives were much smaller, so there wasn’t so
much to copy. So, go after the important data first.

4. The drive doesn’t spin. Either the onboard controller is
bad or the motor is bad (assuming you did try the drive in
another machine). It’s time to hit the net and local
independent shops to see if you can locate another drive of
the same make and model that’s good. Since the drive is
probably an older drive and no longer in distribution, your
best bet is to find an identical used drive. If you know
someone with the same make and model, you might be wise to try
and persuade them to sell you their drive with an offer of
providing them with a free upgraded drive. If you can locate
an identical drive, start with the controller replacement …
this is the simplest and least invasive. If swapping the
controller doesn’t produce the desire result, you can tear
into the drive and swap the motors. While you have both drive
opened up to accomplish this, scrutinize the platters, heads
and armatures. You might even hook the drive up and power it
from a system with both drives attached. This way, you could
see anything that deviates between the actions of both drives
when they are initialized. Swapping patters is unlikely to
produce any positive result. They are a balanced system like
the tires on your car and I suspect that the balance will be
different for each drive as will other variables.

5. There is always a company that will attempt to recoup
your info starting at $500 and going up from there.

Popularity: 2%

Tags: bad-sector, error, harddisk, Hardware, hdd

Formatting A HardDisk, when fdisk won’t work

This is my favorite way to format a hdd

CAUTION: This debug script is for advanced users only. Its Purpose is to remove all formatting and partitioning information from your hard disk when FDISK is unable to do so. THIS WILL REMOVE ALL DATA AND PROGRAMS FORM THE DRIVE.

1. Create a MSDOS bood disk with Debug

2. At DOS command prompt type the following: Debug[Enter] (Where enter is to press the enter key once)

NOTE: Type the following bolded text only. You will recieve an error if you type anything other than the bold text. The non-bolded text represents what will appear on you screen once you press [Enter] after each command.

-F 200 L1000 0 [Enter]
-A CS:100 [Enter]
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 [Enter]
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 [Enter]
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 [Enter]
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 [Enter]

NOTE: ( — “80″ for hd0, “81″ for hd1)

xxxx:010c INT 13 [Enter]
xxxx: 010e INT 20 [Enter]
xxxx: 0110 [Enter]

-G [Enter]
“Program terminated normally”

3. Turn off the computer. On the next startup the hard drive will need to be partitioned and formatted.

Popularity: 4%

Tags: fast-format, fdisk, format, harddisk, hdd, Tips and Tricks

Defrag harddisk for faster processing and better performance

Basically you need to do frequent defragment for your hard disk so the files will be well organized and well structured. Windows can easily access these files after defrag. You just simply need to defrag your hard disk every 2 weeks. Otherwise you can get and automated defrag software to do it in the background when you are idling.

Defrag your  hard disk sometimes may take very long but it is highly recommended for improving your system processing and for better performances.

Popularity: 2%

Tags: boost, defrag, hdd, performance, speed, Windows XP

Common Hard Drive Problems

First of all check all the cables are tight, jumpers are in the correct position, its properly formatted and has an OS installed on it and you can see the drive in the post screen. Also please make sure it has a proper Master Boot Record(MBR). Make sure its not corrupted. You can check it with tools like partition magic or chkdsk which originaly come with windows.

1. Most hard drive problems are caused by physical damage. If you hear a ticking sound coming out from your HDD then it means that something has been bent and that there is now physical damage occurring. Do not wait anymore, start backing up your data. Do not reboot, might not run after reboot.

2. Hard drives don’t usually die without some forewarning. Freezes, reboots, error messages, etc usually indicate that you have a problem and need to start troubleshooting to find out what it is.
Read more

Popularity: 3%

Tags: boot, chkdsk, crash, Hardware, hdd, sata