Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
the data backed up to the new drive and the old drive still as slave, it should now be able to
boot the system. If it boots, I would check to see if the slave is visible. If it is, then double
check to see if all the important data was backed up. For grins, I would now try to boot the old
drive from the IDE card. If it boots, then a possible motherboard problem and would take some
more time.
From: Bruce D. Meyer
Simple,
• Move the defunct hard drive to secondary slave, or master or whatever is unused—but don't
hook the IDE cable up yet.
• (Precaution) Install a new hard drive as primary master set it to 'ACTIVE.' With fdisk, format,
install Windows, power down, hook IDE cable up to the defunct HD, reboot, set BIOS to show
the drive, and then copy all the files (data files only please!) over from the defunct HD to the
new one. Power down, remove HD, change bios to reflect no HD there, and you're done.
• Alternatives are using ARCO RAID IDE controllers to back the data up from one drive
(Primary/defunct) to Mirror/NEW)) and then remove Arco raid (Duplidisk) and install new Hard
drive as primary master.
• Also, you can use
EZ Drive, GHOST
, or one of several other software methods to copy or
mirror the hard drive. If you have bad sectors on the original, you'll quite likely have bad data
on the new drive where the bad sectors were on the old.
• If the old drive won't spin up, or can't be recognized in BIOS whatsoever, power down and up
(Power completely off each time) relentlessly until is it detected (BIOS set to AUTO for that
drive). You will possibly get lucky once in 30 boots.
• Once up, do your work, because it may be the last time it comes on. Also, try letting the
computer cool down for several hours, remove the drive to get it out of a warm case, and let it
cool down. Then try it cold.
• (Thermal deficiency may cause it to fail when hot.) In the same vein, if it is cool, then let it
just sit there with power on it for thirty minutes, then just reboot for about 30 times (Don't
power down.) This may work too.
Of course, let's do first things last.
• Replace your IDE cable, remove the other IDE cable from the motherboard. I have seen CD-
ROMs fail that rendered sound cards, network cards, and OS's brain-dead.
• Simply removing the CD ROM from the IDE cable was all it took to prove this point, and fix
the computer. (Hey! HD is fineI—it's the CD that is tying up the IDE bus and IRQ/DMA
controller!) No data loss.
I probably missed some of the better tricks, but generally, that should solve what is solvable.
From: Joel Yalung
• Check to see if the primary hard drive ribbon is correctly attached or connected to the
Motherboard and Hard drive.
• Make sure it's not loose.
• Or check the ribbon itself—make sure it still good.
• This usually solves the "invalid drive specification" and "BIOS Auto HD detection not finding
the HD."
