[ubamous3]

one of my computers died on me; it's a primary 200 gig divided into 2 partitions; i tried to repair with ERD but doesnt seem to work; if i chkdsk it on another working computer, where should i hook it up to or does it matter? it has an ultra ata pci card on it

also, what other tests can i do before i know that it's completely dead?

thanks very much

 

[dustyjay]

Does the computer that had this drive in it boot up at all with the drive in it? I mean like POST and gt as far as identifying the drives?

You could hook the drive up as slave to any other HDD in your system. If in doing so the computer refuses to boot then remove the drive and try booting again. If it works I would say the drive is dead. If it boots with the "dead" drive in it, is it accessable as a slave drive? If so you may just need to repartition and reformat the drive. If not then you probably do have a bad drive.

 

[Rockn]

Download the disk diagnostics from the manufacturer's web site and run them in the current PC. It may only be the controller. If it is the hard drive you will know right away if the diags cannot access the disk.

 

[dustyjay]

That is also a good Idea Rockn!

 

[ubamous3]

well, earlier it did recognize it in post (or at least i think it did); i went to BIOS and it showed the primary master is the 200 gig; but it just wont boot up the os

 

[dustyjay]

Post some system specs for us including the HDD manufacturer and model. PC info and OS info please.

 

[ubamous3]

ok, this computer was custom built (obviously not by me as u can tell from my question )
it's a pentium 4;
motherboard L4VXA2
windows 2k pro
has 3 HD (all western digital): primary HD is 200 gig WD2000JB-00EVA0(divided into 2 partitions); 2nd and 3rd are 250 gig each
it has 1 gig of DDR RAM

let me know what other specs you need

thanksa lot for your help

 

[ubamous3]

i'm really disappointed in WD; this is the second time it fails on me within less than 3 months; actually, i believe this is the replacement HD that i got from the first one that went bad!

 

[dustyjay]

HMMMMMMM WD strikes again? It is possible that the drive is bad. If you RMA'd the first drive, the way that most manufacturers handle RMA's is to send you a refurb drive not a new one. In most cases they work just fine. Occasionally they really suck and die almosst quicker than you can blink. Have you run the WD disk diagnostics on it yet?

 

[ubamous3]

no i haven't yet; i went to their site and dl a few diagnostic tools but havent had a chance to run it yet; i assume that the diagnostic tool is OS independent b/c at this point, the primary disk is the one in trouble on that computer.

i have question tho dustyjay about your suggesting hooking it up as a slave on the working computer; shouldnt i hook it up as a master on the working compuer (since it was the master and primary on the other one) or it doesnt matter?

earlier, i hooked it up to the working computer as a master on a ultra ata pci card and i saw the D partition of it on partition magic; i tried to do a chkdsk and it gave me an error msg about something cross linked error and then froze; i rebooted and then it didnt see that HD any more

 

[dustyjay]

The reason for hooking it up as slave is just to determine if the drive is accessable. It doesnt really matter though. And the disk diagnostics should let you create a botable floppy to run the diagnostics from. But it sounds like the drive is having problems. so you are going to have to run the Diagnostics anyway so that you can give WD the RMA code.

 

[ubamous3]

i just went and bought a 160 gig seagate to setup as the primary HD; then i can test the bad HD with the utilities once i install win2k completely
but earlier when i had the bad HD as master, it was recognized during POST; so may be the disk is not completely gone yet, hopefully

 

[dustyjay]

You may not meet with success if you are going to try using segate software with a WD drive. From the last time I used the Seagate software it is a pretty good program though. It has been a couple years, so hopefully it has only improved.

Here is the website for the WD Diagnostic utilities. http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#diagutils It is free

 

[ubamous3]

oh no no, i will use the WD utility to test the WD drive, but i have to get the seagate to be up and running first tho; it's being formatted and installed win2k on it;takes forever
during post, it sees 160 gig, but during installation, it seems to only see about 128 gig, so i guess i might have to run the software from their cdrom in order for the OS to see the full 160 gig.

 

[dustyjay]

do you have the software on a floppy? You should be able to boot from either the floppy or maybe the cd so that you can set up your Seagate disk before installing the OS. This is what I would do.

 

[ubamous3]

oops; i didnt use the cdrom before setting up win2k; i guess it's too late for that; it's prob. ok to do it afterwards as well, hopefully