[Gllug] OT: Hard drive failure

[Simon Bunker]

Hah! At least you get clicking! I didn't even get that! A few months ago my
IBM drive died on me - I think it might have been something to do with
filling it up although it said there was some room free (win32 on win
2000pro though). Have you tried setting the jumpers to slave? Of course
helps if you have something to use as the master. Also if it's making
clicking noises try getting a screwdriver and lightly tapping it a bit -
might free up the heads.

I was told about the replacing the board thing too - seems to be the only
solution, but it also seems extremely last resort - most of the connections
are very fiddly. And of course the very large chance of having two broken
hard disks! (PS if anyone has a 20Gb IBM drive that they don't want then I
might try this). Currently mine is sitting next to the computer waiting til
I have the money to do anything about it meanwhile I (ironically) bought a
Maxtor to replace it ;o) I was just about to back it up as well.... well at
least I can say that.

IDE drives seem to have a history of failing mysteriously from what I have
heard. Then again I was trying to help set up a friends machine with win2k
pro on a SCSI setup but it wasn't having any of it - does anyone know how to
get working - it seems to need drivers (Pentium 2 Gigabyte) but I don't know
where to find them on gigabyte's websiute or ifthey work for windows 2000.
And before some idiot says "Easy solution - use Linux - Windoze sux!" this
is not what they want - I already asked that one. Win95 seems to be the only
thing that installs properly (arghhh!)

Simon

> On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 06:11:19PM -0400, ChrisJS at aol.com wrote:
> > On bootup, it makes choking noises and slight beeping and isn't
recognised
> > as being there by BIOS. When this kind of thing happens, is there any
> > chance of the contents being intact and recoverable ?
>
> Sure, though not the Maxtor support way. If the drive isn't spinning up,
> it's a mechanical rather than a media failure. The data's still there,
> but the electronics that read from it are down. It would be an idea, if
> you can, to purchase another identical Maxtor drive. Swap the controller
> boards over, see if it boots. If it does, copy the data across to the
> new drive, send the old one back and get a replacement from Maxtor.
>
> Maxtor will replace it for you, but they won't save the data. Afaik.
>
> ~C.
>
> --
> Chris Ball.
> chris at cpan.org || http://printf.net/
> "Every time someone says "I don't believe in theories", another theory
dies."


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