Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
6) Here's where it starts getting tricky. By now you must be reasonably convinced you have a
bad case of galloping disk rot. On some drives (not all), if you have an identical same model
drive, you can swap over the logic board. This will let you know if it is the embedded controller
on the logic board. With luck, your disk will roar into life and you can suck the data off onto
somewhere safe.
7) If your disk is making a hideous noise like a peg-legged man with a vacuum cleaner on a
wooden floor (whirrr, clunk, whirrr, clunk....), then it is likely you have a dropped head. This is
where you have start making decisions about how much your data is worth, because to go any
further is going to cost big time and may require factory technicians to try and repair the disk
in a clean-room environment. If your data was that important, then it would have been backed
up. (Of course it would have been, they all respond in loud voices)
8) She's dead, Jim. How fast can you type?
In a nutshell, this is my summary of the death
cycle of a hard disk.
From: Daniel F.
Get an identical Hard Drive and swap out the Logic Unit (Electronic Board). Set your CMOS to
autodetect.
You're good to go!!!
From: Miles H.
• Check cables are on and are the correct way round.
• Check jumpers to ensure the disk has the correct setting (depending on otherisks or CD-ROM
used on the same controller, if any).
• Check Bios setting for Model of PC is current. Download latest version if necessary.
• Boot from DOS floppy, use FDISK to check if disk can be seen. If the disk is there, then I
would suggest using GHOST or similar to copy the image from disk to disk.
• If the disk was not apparently running, I would swap the disk out and install it into a PC that
was working.
• The options here would be to have the 'faulty' disk as the master or slave depending on your
situation.
• If installed and works as master, ghost the image to the network.
• If installed as slave, boot the PC and use ghost to copy from disk to disk or to Network.
• If disk was still in a state of absolute failure, I would suggest contacting the disk
manufacturer to ask their advice.
• They may have some low-level disk checking/repairing software.
• I would also install a new disk into the original PC with O/S on and ask the user to ensure all
data is put onto the network (if possible).
• If all else fails, then you'd have to chalk it up as experience and hopefully someone would
learn to ensure sufficient backup procedure were implemented.
• Therefore, the next time this happened it would not matter. You would be able to reinstall
the O/S and Applications (manually or automate) and restore data back to the user (if held
locally).