re: 1720 Hard Drive Failure, Can't Boot
Sunday, December 7, 2003 at 1:43 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Jeff
(8 messages posted)
I want to thank all of you for the replies. They are creative.
Because I'm nervous about the Drive's integrity, I purchased a New Maxtor Diamond
Plus ATA/133 80Gig Internal Drive. My strategy (which I have begun) involves removing
the old drive as is, installing the new drive as a Master. Then, I’ll put the old
drive back in as a slave, and run utilities from the Master drive, and see what repairs
I can make on it. The reason for this strategy is to get the machine back up and
running, with a new drive too. Also, this will make the boot issues moot.
Can anyone recommend some good utilities for Hard Disk recovery. Of course this implies
Data recovery too, but I’m looking for utilities that will resurrect the drive itself.
I’ll look on Maxtor’s site because the old drive happens to be a Maxtor too.
I appreciate the tip about getting the drive cold. I actually thought heating it
up would be interesting too. I thought perhaps the drive mechanism is too cold.
Best to all,
JeffTronics
On Saturday, December 6, 2003 at 9:46 am, Dan Sarandrea, MCSE wrote:
>Seems as though the disk is too far gone for any of XP's tools to help.
>
>Find out the manufacturer of the disk and download from their website the disk diagnostic
>and file repair tools package. For example, Western Digiatl call theirs Data Lifeguard
>Tools, Maxtor call theirs PowerMax, etc.
>
>The tool disks usually boot into someone's DOS and run to examine the disk much
like
>chkdsk does, but one would hope only better since you would expect the tool to be
>tailored to the disk. The tool will also be able to read any info coming from the
>SMART circuitry, which is probably the process that generated the "this disk is
about
>to die" notice.
>
>I have read this in many different places and have had people tell me it works but
>I have yet to have occasion to do it myself, but....
>
>If your disk has really, really crashed to where the disk manufacturer tool cannot
>get it to work enough to even run the diagnostics, try tightly packaging the disk
>in an airtight Ziplock-type bag and putting it in the freezer overnight.
>
>The next day, prepare the computer and your work area to have the disk reinstalled
>quickly (as you are in a battle against the disk thawing out), and then fire up
the
>computer and attempt to start into XP. If by some semi-miracle it starts, act quickly
>and extract your important docs and data over a network, or to CD-R, or whatever.
>
>There is absolutley no telling if this will work, and if it does, how long will
it
>work. If you get some docs off the drive and it crashes again, you have nothing
>to lose by doing the process all over again.
>
>And if you try it, you have to promise us here at annoyances.org that you post
>back and tell us how it went!
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