Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
"invalid drive specification" or "disk 0" errors, cold boot the machine and enter CMOS setup.
Make sure the disk controller (whether it is IDE or SCSI) is enabled. Set it to AutoDetect if it is
an IDE drive. Set the correct SCSI options (by entering the appropriate SCSI utility) if it is a
SCSI drive. Since the system was working before, I assume the SCSI IDs and master/slave
parameters are correct. After the correct options are set, reboot the system. For an IDE drive,
if the system still does not recognize it, manually enter the drive parameters in the CMOS set
up and reboot again. If the system has a CD-ROM drive, note if it was being recognized by the
system. If the system does not recognize both hard drives and CD-ROM drives, take the
computer case off and replace the IDE cables (or SCSI cables if they are SCSI drives). Note
any broken pins when you replace the cables. If there are any broken pins, you may have to
replace the drives or motherboard. After you've replaced the cables, if the drives are still not
being recognized, the drives may be bad. If you have a spare working drive, plug it in. If it
works, then you know the other drives are bad: either a severe virus has contaminated the
drives such that the drive parameters are overwritten, or there are physical errors with the
drives. If the system does not even recognize your spare working drive, then the disk
controller is bad and needs to be replaced. If the system recognizes the drive but does not
boot up your OS, cold boot your system from a bootable virus ERD and do a complete scan of
the failed drive. Repair any corrupted master boot records if possible. If the virus-scanning disk
does not find any virus, cold boot the system with a bootable ERD from your favorite disk
repairing software such as Norton Disk Doctor. If this still does not help, but you are able to
access the data from a floppy boot disk, you can recover the system by backing up all your
data and reinstalling the OS on the hard drive. If the failed drive can't be accessed from a boot
floppy and is not repairable by any "disk doctor" programs, take it to a data recovery center.
From: Robert K. Kuhn
Since you did not state what kind of hard drive this is (MFM, RLL, SCSI, ESDI, IDE/EIDE), I'm
going to assume IDE/EIDE. An "Invalid Drive Type" error usually means that the wrong drive
type has been selected in CMOS. I am also going to assume that the BIOS/CMOS supports this
hard drive size (some older BIOS's required a third party software patch; drives that were 500
MB and larger for instance...). If Auto Detect does not work or if the BIOS/CMOS setup does
not have an Auto Detect feature, then I would do as follows:
1. Verify that the drive is spinning up and that all the cables are hooked up properly.
2. I would then verify that the drive itself is configured/jumpered correctly
(master/slave/single drive). Most of your current IDE/EIDE drives have the jumper setting on
the drive itself, which makes it nice. Though some of the older ones do not, which forces you
to call their tech support or search their Web site for jumper configuration.
3. If I had access to another computer, I would either try swapping out the cable to see if I
had a bad cable or I would just simply install the "bad" drive into the other computer and see if
the BIOS/CMOS detects the drive. If it does not, then chances are very good that the drive is
kaput. However, if the other computer does see the drive and I am able to boot up with it,
then I have to assume that there's a problem with the other computer's IDE/EIDE controller.
One last attempt would be to find the geometry of the drive (cylinders, heads, sectors) and
add them in manually. If it booted fine with the other computer, the geometry can be copied
from there. Otherwise, a call to the vendor or a search on their Web site would be order. If the
hard drive controller is found to be bad, depending on the motherboard (going with the
assumption that it has an onboard controller with both a primary and secondary controller), I
