Hard Drive not working any more...help!

apeking

Hi,

I have the same setup for the last 5 months, 2 1TB Samsung drives and 2 500GB Maxtor drives. All was working well until yesterday, my computer wouldnt boot up past the windows loading scree. So i disconnected all hard drives except my master drive(1TB drive) adn it cooted ok. Then i reconnected the other drives in turn and it worked untill put 1 of the Maxtor drives in but the other Maxtor drive works on boot up.

So i have 1 Maxtor 500GB which will not boot up with the system. I connected it to the system via an external usb/sata cable and it is recognised but it crashed explorer and it doesnt show up in My Computer.

It sounds like the drive is ****ed to me but is there anything i can do to get the data off it?

Thanks

Triangle

it depends,

you could try software like getdataback for NTFS. This may get some data off the disk for you.

BUT if the mechanism for reading the disk is broken then unless you replace the mechanism (very dodgy) i'd reckon you've lost the data.


Have you tried setting up a raid configuration on your computer? It's a good way to prevent data loss and alot of MB's come with raid now.

Trig

apeking

Ye i probably should set Raid up,

Have been meaning too. Have tried that program u suggested yesterday but when it runs it doesnt recognise the drive...

Sparkicks

Disable autorun and perhaps use linux to test it. I'm assuming its fat64 or 32 unless you converted it yourself to ntfs.

gamer

go 2 www.ntfs.com download ACTIVE boot disk demo ,install on pc,make imagedisk ,boot from cd image,this reads all hd formats,ntfs etc.if hd is formatted fat32 then linux should be able to read it ,dl livecd linux,boot from that.OR try boot pc,safe mode, DOS prompt only, type dir, d:\ or e or dir f:\ ,does the drive show up in dos mode.
CAN YOU FEEL the drive spin up when you turn on the pc.place a finger on top of drive ,you should fell small vibration from platters spinning up for a few seconds.its possible to copy files using a dos shell,ie norton commander with mouse support,if winxp doesnt see the drive.there may be files scrambled on the hd which causes explorer 2 crash.

apeking

Ok guys, i finally got GetBackData for NTFS to detect the drive and i ran the test for bad sectors, it was going at a snails pace and only had 10MB completed after 1 hour.

So i am guessing there is actually something physically wrong with the drive and its just making the drive respond really slowly.

Is this a known fault?

So i plugged it back into my system and restarted computer, it took over 2 hours to reach the windows home page. Now i can see my drive in my computer but im afraid to open it so i am running Acronis True Image home to create a backup of the drive(running at the moment, says it will take 6 hours to complete) and i will then try reformat the drive and see if that does anything.

Anyone got an idea whats actually wrong with the drive?

If not i can still RMA it as its warranty isnt up till 2012.

Thanks for all your help, much appreciated.

gamer

whats the drive setting in bios, is it set as slave in bios,drive 3 or 4,are you saying it took 2 hours to boot up windows,the actual,pcb hd board may be damaged,its possible to replace pcb,if you get another identical hd,with the exact same hd circuit board.theres a chance the hd data cable needs to be replaced.You should have gone 2 bios,switch off quickboot, SET bios,AUTOdetect all hds.OR winxp may think its a boot hd,which causes explorer crash,like crash you get when you try and open a cdrom thats scratched,that has some damaged data files.

apeking

ye it is set to slave in bios. It took two hours to get to windows desktop. I am still running the image software, taking longer than i expected.

If it works ill just get them to replace the hard drive instead of trying to change the pcb myself

gamer

you,b be better off ,load activeboot demo , cdr,boot from cdimage, theres a conclict between,the hds,just connect faulty hd .by itself, disconnect other hds,if pc crashes,or cdactive,doesnt boot hd is faulty. a faulty hd,OR cable can stop pc loading.
tyr changing the cable,can you see the hd during the inital boot process,diconnect the dvd too.