HD failure - anything to check?

[AlanMiller]

Unfortunately I've had a secondary master failure, but it was an "out of the blue" variety. Suddenly a system freeze then after a painful series of reboots, no D: ! Even the BIOS can't autodetect it. I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to check it and (since it showed no sign of deteriorating) if there is any recovery method... although if nothing can see it I don't hold much hope.

Alan

[StuartR]

Can you try moving the disk to another computer to see if it works there?

[Argus]

If it's not detected by BIOS Setup it's not possible to use recovery software, I'm afraid; but one can always check the power and data connections (remove and attach the cables). Stuart's tip is very good, if one has more than one PC, since it does the above and also includes a check on other BIOS. One could also, but that involves the whole PC, examine the BIOS settings and perhaps reset them.

Sometimes the HDD manufacturers have a utility, software, which can be used to scan the disk. It's possible that they also have information about BIOS settings, and settings that can be used if not using "autodetect".

[ChrisGreaves]

Even the BIOS can't autodetect it.

I'm with Stuart on this one.
A week ago my neighbour's machine managed to "see" my failed 80G IDE, and I was able to grab data from it, whereas I was unable to do anything on the original Big Beige Box.

[Argus]

It's possible that one has to check jumpers if moving a HDD from one PC to another, not if moving from one slave position to another etc.; also, since in this case it was a second HDD, one could look at changing cables; or removing other devices on the same cable, if any, i.e. a slave.

Chris, in your case, was it several partitions, and it didn't start the OS? If so, it could still have been recognised by the BIOS, but have some problems with MBR or some OS file(s); in many cases, if not a real HDD failure, it's possible to rebuild these, such as a damaged Boot.ini or NTLDR (often generates the same error) with the recovery console and a Windows CD. But it's also possible to move it to another PC if one only want to recover data.

[ChrisGreaves]

Chris, in your case, was it several partitions, and it didn't start the OS? If so, it could still have been recognised by the BIOS, but have some problems with MBR or some OS file(s); in many cases, if not a real HDD failure, it's possible to rebuild these, such as a damaged Boot.ini or NTLDR (often generates the same error) with the recovery console and a Windows CD. But it's also possible to move it to another PC if one only want to recover data.

Hi Argus.
In my case I feel it was several (relatively) large and malignant flakes of oxide shedding.

Yes, I had two partitions:
C: at 10GB and D: at 70GB.
I didn't care about the 10GB (Windows, Program Files) but I cared deeply about the 70GB which held 27GB of MP3 tracks (ripped from my CDs and d/l from the web) and about 6,000 JPEGs captured by my camera over the past 5 years.

The BIOS reported were variously "NTLDR not found", "Disk Read Error".
I tried reinstalling WinXP from the CD but the installation kept crashing.

Once I took the drive to another machine, the 10GB was not recognised at all, but the 70GB was visible.
(Our hero Robocopy's to an external drive before doing anything else!)

Once the music/photo folders were copied I tried to delete them but found two files that had CRC errors and would NOT be deleted by Windows or by Unlocker.

At this point I reasoned that I probably had physical damage on both partitions.

Still on the other machine I ran a command prompt CHKDSK which said nasty things about sector(?) errors or such like.
I recall that it reported "File Read"(?) errors about 25 times per 1% of progress through the scan; I terminated the scan at around 15% the way through.

Back on my original BigBeigeBox I used the WinXP installation process to delete partitions and re-create them; again from memory I had to do this a few times before they would "stick", but ultimately got back to my 10/70GB partitions. I installed Windows and Robocopied the music more out of spite than anything; I think the 80GB IDE is quite old and dangerous to use.

I then fired up a 400GB IDE, hardly used, loaded WinXP and music on that and plan to use it as the print server, scanner (old 32-bit drivers) and anything else that is Win7/64bit incompatible, non-critical and can store its results away from the BBB.

HTH

[AlanMiller]

Thanks guys, for your rapid responses. I was about to try the "other machine option" when I had a thought. Maybe I'll remove it, let the BIOS see there's nothing there, then replace it and let the BIOS (maybe) detect it again. Bingo! "Maybe" worked. I suspect though, that it was possibly a connection problem involved too. The support screws weren't doing much of a job (wrong size me thinks!) so it may have been subjected to vibration at the connections. Perhaps a weird combination of things. Anyway, looks OK now.

cheers
Alan

[ChrisGreaves]

... remove it, let the BIOS see there's nothing there, then replace it ...

So the old carrot-and-stick technique works, eh? (Of course in Australia it is the stick-and-carrot trick)
As part of my journey I found web pages that suggested I set the (BIOS) fail-safe defaults, and that has generated a trivial but annoying message at boot time, so I'm not sure whether (BIOS) Fail-Safe defaults is a good thing to try.

[Argus]

Anyway, looks OK now.

Good to hear that, Alan.

[Argus]

... As part of my journey I found web pages that suggested I set the (BIOS) fail-safe defaults, and that has generated a trivial but annoying message at boot time, so I'm not sure whether (BIOS) Fail-Safe defaults is a good thing to try.

Chris,
Even if we are now going off-topic (in a thread not ours): (BIOS) Setup Defaults or, Fail-Safe Defaults, are usually very safe, they shouldn't generate errors, but they can result in things like no audio, no network connections etc.

But, depending on the hardware - and the only one who knows is the one who built it - it's possible that one has to tweak some settings. I'm not thinking about onboard audio, it's usually set to Enabled, or Quick Boot etc. An example: I have on the XP machine a motherboard with an eSATA connector; this connector as well as one of the internal SATA connectors is controlled by a separate controller, not the southbridge. The default setting for this controller in the BIOS Setup is: Enabled. I don't have an external HDD connected to the eSATA, nor do I have a HDD connected to the internal SATA connector controlled by this controller. If the BIOS setting is at its default, with no disks connected to the controller, I will see a brief warning at start: Disk not found. This is not an error per se, and I can avoid it by changing a setting.

Thus, if the Default, or Fail-Safe, settings will work, or not, depend on the hardware and which settings they thought were "safe". I recommend people who buy a new computer to write down the settings, or at least the most important, if they don't think they'll remember them, since the one who built the PC may have changed some settings, not using the default. If you then need to reset BIOS, you know which settings to change afterwards.