Braindead time

?????

I have always had a floppy ( or maybe two ) with tools on it ( them ) come with the drive. At least my two new 40gig drives did.

And don't forget we have to throw the individual machine into this mix of problems also.

And I am fully aware that the newer drives will not take the beating that the older drives would.

I was also told yesterday by a Friend that HDs are getting to the point of not being gaurenteed for more than one year. I can't print what I think of that if it is true.

My Daughter and a couple of others that I know have had new OEM machines ( with XP ) for no more than six months and have had the HDs replaced already.

Good grief. I am running HDs that are several years old and they are still doing just fine. Of course I can't ( or at least should not ) run then along side of the new ones as they may tend to slow the new ones down.

BillyBob

 

LifeGuard? DataGuard? Fence Guard?

Whatever//// E-Z Drive was the one I used some years back and when I got into a situation where I wanted to use Norton's recovery system it told me that it couldn't do anything with the data as the drive was using "an overlay system it couldn't recognize ".


Since then I've gotten a 48x CDR and now burn copies of everything at least once a month (will be more often now I'm working from home.... anyone wanna lease a 200,000 dollar spectrometer? I'm your boy!) so that I don't haveta fool with those things no more, no more.... just recopy all the data files to wherever and off we go.

I've got the system broke down for dinner but I'll reassemble it tonite or tomorrow AM and keep on plugging.... WD's toolkit will be the next thing I try unless one a' youse 15-year-old geniuses has another suggestion for the Old Man...

[And that's not a snide remark... my nephew in Oregon got four 486's and 2 P-II's at an auction and took 'em home... pulled 'em all apart and now (8 months later) is a Linux maven (completely turns his nose up at anything from MockroShaft) with seven PC's of varying ilks running in the basement and doing God alone knows what... perhaps he's setting up the next World Government? I used to be thrilled with a string and two cans!]

Well... off to do dinner for the Lady and I'll check back in a bit to see if anyone else has weighed in on the issue.

Abraxas, BillyBob and Bmoore, thanks again for your patience and help in this *#&^@%# *&&$^@( (censored) ) endeavour.


Vince

 

Life-Guard utilities seem to be the deal

You'll need your W98 W98SE or WME boot disk as well. Aparently under Win2K, XP, XP-Pro and XP-highly-overpriced-Corporate-Pro it is not necessary to use this utility... I suppose MockroShift decided to fix the bug finally in the higher-priced spreads. (Well, to be fair, a 120GB HDD in 2000 would probably have been an SCSI server drive!) In eany event, it detected and allowed me to format both drives in a matter of five minutes total end-to-end, and that ain't too shabby!

So now I'm off to the wonderful world of W98SE installation.....

Again. thanks to all for your help.

The lifeguard software is FREE at the Western Digital site, and I understand that the other major manufacturers also have similar programs available for download, so follow Abraxas' lead and - if you have anything to do with setting up or installing HDD's for work or your friends or whatever - it would be a GOOD IDEA to get a copy from each site and keep it in your emergency box. I have done so.

Adios !

(Dang, now I'm all dry and smokable again!)

Vince

(Incidentally, Mr. Moderator... "Senior Member "??? Senior Idiot maybe.....)

 

Where did you get the HD ?

I ask this as the last two 30 & 40gig HDs I bought had a Data Lifeguard Tools floppy packed with them.

The tools disk includes;

EZ Install
Diagnostics
Bios Check
Ultra ATA Management.

BillyBob

 

Where got?

MarketPro Computer show in Eastern Pennsylvania... I wanted an 80 but they gave me a 120 and charged for an 80 as they were out of them.... just the drive in a sealed anti-static bag.

Nice little family of Japanese Issei who have a computer business not terribly far from me. I've dealt with them before, but contrary to the old racist joke, their english approaches incomprehensibility even when things are going very well. Ishida-san gets very frustrated trying to express himself properly to the Gaijiin!

 

OK. That explains why there was no Floppy.

BillyBob

 

OK Time to move this to WIN98 forum

Because as how it ain't working.

Dagnab thing is giving me fits and starts here.

Finally got the drives recognized and "formatted" by LifeGuard, but then on trying to install WIN98SE I run into the interesting problem that the install program thinks that there is already an operating system installed on the HDD!

If I read everything right at the LifeGuard site (at this unGodly long URL) then simply installing the softwa... "More Brain-deadedness, I think I think? "

 

Go here: http://www.ecsusa.com/downloads/bios.html
Select your motherboard model, and get the BIOS flash for it.
The motherboard cannot natively recognize drives over 80gb, which is probably where the whole problem lies, but I could be wrong, depending on which BIOS version shipped with the board.
Another issue (and without wading through all the past posts) is the possibility that you have not jumpered the drives to CS, and are not using an 80 wire cable. (Ignore this if I'm wrong).
Once you've done the flash, reset the CMOS, then redetect the drives, and THEN refdisk the drives.
Have you tried mounting the drives on separate cables/channels, instead of master/slave?
Have you tried reversing the order, so the 120 is master (still jumpered CS!!!)?

 

Close the thread!! Success!!

REBOOT:

I already had everything recognized and formatted, it was WIN98SE's install program from the boot disk that came with it that was AFU. I used an older boot disk, started the 'Puter with CD support, then found the CD drive, did a "dir/w/p" dos command and hit startup.... bingo.

Win98SE is now happily ensconced on the C:\ drive and I'm fighting the good battle installing all the little peripheral **** that always gives you a hard time because some path or another can't be found without a lot of mining effort. One intelligent thing I did was copy the CD to a logical drive I created expressly for that purpose and it makes finding a lot of this stuff a lot easier... no CD swapping required.

Again, thanks to all for the help and suggestions.

Vince (who is now gonna go dry the bar out of all the Irish whisky they have...)