Is My Hard Drive Dead and other such questions

MonkeyKong007

Im pretty sure one of my hard drives dead

tell tail signs

i plug it in and the bios just freezes and when i take it out it carries on as normal...

just need to confirm this... im really annoyed about that!

and also, how do i run a file say in my system32 folder from msprompt?

i am using windows xp!

Thanks

Monkey

SONIC_2

Sounds like something ups with that hard drive! Basic logic says that if the system works without it in, and doesn't work with it in, it must be the hard drive!

You might want to check the power and data cables to and from the PC and hard drive, and if possible plug it inot another PC, and try it. If it does the same, it's had it. (Note: For a period of time, hard drives came with 3 year warranty, you may be able to claim under this from the manufacturer depending on how old the drive is. Tihis is one area I've always had good expereinces with in IT)

;D

As far as your DOS Prompt (I think you mean), question, I don't get what you are trying to do. Do you know anything about DOS, and what the basic commands are? Do you know how to get to the System32 directory? What exactly are you trying to run?

???

Coldfinger

Agreed with the post above.

The drive may cause the startup to freeze if you have the ribbon cable the wrong way round. The red strand should go to pin one on the motherboard IDE socket and to pin one on the drive. If you have older cables you may be able to insert them the wrong way around but newer cables have a stub on them that means you can only insert them the correct way. On your drive pin 1 is normally nearest to the power cable socket.

You should also look at the pins at the back of the drive, the ones which the ribbon cable fits onto. If one of these pins is bent or snapped off then you can have similar problems to the one you describe (amongst others).

As said above, try the drive in another machine to see if it caused problems or is identified there. Do not use your own cable, use the one that is currently installed in the good machine/working drive. If another machine sees it then you may have a cable fault or a motherboard fault.

A telltale sign of a bad drive is the click of death, that tick tick tick that tells you that time has passed on just like your data.

MonkeyKong007

oh dear...

i will try it but i my other system can't hack 80 gb hard drives...

really really precious files were on that, and they werent backed up!!

is there no way i could get them back... i think it might possibly be a problem with the pins

and the blatant cause it seems... i was plugging the power cable in and suddenly there was a spark from the part of the hard drive where the power is connected, when the wire and the point touched.

Coldfinger

Gah!

I think you rproblem is going to be more than just the pins, you have probably blown the controller circuit in the hard drive.

If your data is valuable then there are people who will be able to change the controller and rescue your data for you but they are often not cheap.

ALWAYS disconnect the power before working inside a computer, most modern computers have a motherboard which is live unless the power is disconnected. The voltage is low and may not kill you but it can kill the components.

SONIC_2

I agree with the above post I'm afraid, it sounds like you have killed your hard drive! If it's any help, you should be able to claim on the warranty, but that doesn't get your data back....

:-/

MisterT2

I have reclaimed files off defunct hard drives before. Usually its just a problem with the controller board as mentioned above in which case you might want to try sourcing one from Ebay etc. This is one reason why old drives sometimes fetch stupid money we paid nearly £40 for an old 20GB drive. The boards are really easy to change over so long as you have exactly the same disk.


If its not the controller, then as a worst case scenario, you might be able to swap some of the internals though this can be a lot more difficult than you might think as some of the screws are done up to a very high torque. I have managed to change the patters from one disk to another and get data off. It might be something you want to try depending on how valuable your data is. Once you open a hard drive, you need to keep it as clean as possible. It won't last long but I managed to back an entore system off in 30 mins.

Apart from that there are some data recovery services that will probably do all the above for you at a fairly hefty fee.

mondayuk

Related to the question about accessing the System32 folder. You'll probably want to use the Recovery Console feature of XP. Boot from your Windows XP CD, and follow the options of the first screen for Repairing and then the recovery console.

This will allow you access to all files within your Windows folder so long as you know the Windows administrator password.

Of course none of this will help at all if you cant boot with the hard drive in. I agree that in most cases bright blue flashes of light inside your computer are generally a sign that you've broken something. I'd like to add the IDE controller on the motherboard to the list of things you might have killed, however much more likely to be the hard drive as that's where the flash occurred. If you can grab a spare hard drive from somewhere it will give you a better idea of what you need to replace. If it works with the new hard drive, think about replacing the hard drive. If it does not, it might be the motherboard.

MondaYUK