Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
From: Letehumy Rajavalu, GSSB
Reboot the PC, get to the CMOS setup and set the drive type to "auto" again to confirm if the
hard disk is detected.
Else, get back to the CMOS setup again and try to set the correct drive type based on the
capacity of the hard disk which can be found on the hard disk itself if you open up the CPU
casing.
From: Brent Hunter
Very simple, I think?! While the drive is running, you should be able to get all the information
off the drive, unless it has "bad sectors, etc." My usual task list involves using "GHOST" to get
the data of the hard drive. But sometimes this doesn't work, because of bad sectors, or the
drive timing out while trying to sort itself out. My next solution is to use XCOPY32 under a
Windows 98 dos prompt. This enables you to use more and interesting switches. Ninety-nine
percent of the time, this gets the data off a failing drive. My syntax is a follows:
XCOPY32 x:\*.* y:\ /E /H /C
x: = source drive (i.e. failing drive)
y: = target drive
/E = copies all directories and subdirectories including empty ones.
/H = copies hidden and system files (i.e. SYSTEM.DAT & USER.DAT are Windows registry files
with the Hidden and System attributes).
/C = this switch is the trick. Even if the drive times out and then starts up again, XCOPY32 will
continue copying the data over.
From: Skip Berryhill
You didn't say, but often, when a hard drive won't boot, you can boot on a floppy disc with
FDISK on it, log onto the hard drive, and execute some commands (DIR, COPY, and the like).
If they work okay, you can use the following from the floppy: FDISK /MBR and re-write the
Master Boot Record of the physical drive. Next, remove the floppy and reboot. It will usually be
alright. If it operates properly, all it means is that the MBR was somehow corrupted. Nothing
major it was re-written by the FDISK /MBR command. The /MBR switch was undocumented for
a long time.
From: Phil Adams
• Get the new hard drive and setup as the master the old drive as the slave.
• After running scandisk, you should be able to xcopy everything to the new drive.
• Worse case, install the OS to the new drive then copy the user files over.
From: Robert P Mulhearn, Jr
Use Steve Gibson's
spinrite
on a quarterly basis to keep track of HD condition and recover bad
drives aslong as they are recognized by OS.
From: Kevin Flateau
First of all, is the drive alive?
When you turn on the machine shortly after a quick ticking noise (watch the memory count on
the screen), then you'll hear the floppy do a quick click and the light on the front will go on,
then you'll hear some short clicking from the hard drive and its name will appear on the
