Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
from Web the latest update of that driver and install it temporarily (Use a boot diskette rather
then installing at Primary Master's Boot Sector) and boot from that diskette.
7) Hopefully you've been able to access HD. If not there may be some tools in the
manufacturer's soft you've downloaded; otherwise ... try to stay calm!!! and proceed with
some Web searching. There are some good tools to access the partition and try to fix it
manually (If you Dare) using a disk editor to repair boot partition. Well it 's much more
complicated sometimes but you may try it at your own risk. Or you may just say "
Hmmmm..... Told you so... Sorry there is no way out... you should keep backups!" (an easy
solution :->)
From: Doug Wood
I have found that if you cannot hear the drive spinning by putting your ear next to it, try
removing the drive from the computer and twisting the drive rapidly in your hand in the plane
of the drive. This will sometimes unstick a bad bearing and allow the drive to spin up.
From: Bill Chomik
What I do in this situation is as follows.
• I always have a spare hard drive with me. I hook this drive up to the computer in question
making it the primary drive. The drive that doesn't work, I change the jumper to become a
secondary master and attach it to the same ribbon in the computer.
• The computer is then booted up with the good hard drive. In a lot of cases, I then have no
problem accessing the bad drive. All necessary files can then be backed up to tape, or copied
to the good drive.
• Once this is done, a new drive is put in as the primary drive. The O/S is then loaded on with
all other necessary software. The spare drive is then connected as the secondary master and
booted up again. All files that were recovered are then copied back to the new drive.
• If the above doesn't work where the bad drive cannot be accessed, any and all loses are
accounted for. The old drive is thrown away and replaced with a new drive. The person who
doesn't take the responsibility for backing up his data has to learn to live with the
consequences of these actions. A lot of times, I'm the one that ends up getting blamed, but
you learn to take this with a grain of salt and brush it off.
From: Billy Dunn
The first thing I do is boot on a boot disk and fdisk/mbr if the computer can see the hard drive
but can't boot after you sys C:.
From: Ben Hardman
Lets see...
• First, I would see if I could see the disk in the BIOS.
• If the HD is visible in the bios, I would try something like fdisk/mbr.
• I would view the partition info and see if it was showing the correct partition info.
• Assuming all of that is correct, I would try running microscope diagnostics and see what kind
of errors it is producing—whether it be a seek error or an actual damage to the drive.
• I would first get another drive preferably the exact same model drive.
• I would try and run Symantec Ghost on it and write a script file telling it to ignore bad
sectors and continue copying anyway.
