RIP Hard Drive

Hello people,

Thank you for turning up on this cold, sad day. We mourn the passing of a 10GB hard drive, the heart of my Compaq Deskpro PC. Memories go with this unit to its grave... and it's all very frustrating!!

Anyway, I was wondering whether the following Hard Drive is compatible with my system to resurrect this PC; details follow.

My system:
Pentium-III 500MHz, 128Mb, Compaq mainboard.

Hard drive under consideration:
Seagate Barracuda ST340014A (40GB, 7200rpm, Ultra ATA/100)

Specifically, is the Ultra ATA/100 a supported speed for this motherboard?

Your response(s) would be greatly appreciated to this query.

Have a nice day!

 

Hi.

Yes, that drive is compatible with your system. If your system does not run at the ATA100 speed then it will automatically run the Seagate at ATA66. The Seagate is backwards compatible.

Also, your system might not recognize the full 40GB available on that drive but you can split it into a drive that is fully recognizable and the remaining into another virtual drive. This is done all the time and is nothing new or difficult.

If you're running Windows XP you can set the drive up as an NTFS drive rather than FAT32 and XP will recognize the entire drive. Also, Segate has programs that you can download for free that will add drivers to the bios which will allow the entire drive to be recognized.

We would need the specific model number of your motherboard to answer specifically but it shouldn't matter. The above notes hold true for all the Compaq motherboards in that MHz range.

Good luck and have fun.

Hope this helps.

Giles

 

Off the track...but is the 10GB completely dead? Do you see a HDD led flash at boot? Is it there any information on it in the startup screens (BIOS setup)? Have you tried the manufacturer's diagnostics programs?

May give you a 10GB secondary drive.

Luck
Matt

 

Thanks, guys, for the advice and information.

giles, I appreciate your confirmation regarding system compatibility. The system I have is a Compaq Deskpro EN, ATX (but with the AGP NLX type graphics configuration), comfortably running PIII @ 500MHz. I think the range does go faster than that, and can see RAM > 512Mb.

mattman, I have tried the following of your suggestions, and found the corresponding results:

1) Switched system on, and watched the HDD LED.
- The LED did briefly light up, but obviously the BIOS doesn't read from the drive. I assume that the BIOS is merely asking the drive what it is.

2) Went into BIOS mode, and checked the IDE DEVICES.
- The BIOS showed the first device as a 10Gb drive, but did not show number of cylinders, heads or sectors. This might be normal for this system (I can't remember whether I ever noticed that information before - it's a relatively new system to me)

3) Exit BIOS without saving.
- The PC started to boot, but due to the fact that I had to crash out last night it therefore went into Scandisk mode. After about 10% of the way into Scandisk, a warning came up about the depth of the directory tree being too deep and Scandisk would try to continue. Then, it just went into DOS window mode (black screen) and the repeated message:

"File allocation table bad, drive C "

arrived, repeatedly scrolling on the screen. The drive LED was not on, and the system was not trying to access the drive.

So, does this mean that the drive is dead? How would I be able to retrieve data from the drive now? There are some important files there which I really don't want to lose.

I hope a solution is possible, and will be very grateful for any further help and information here.

Dodge

 

Not necessarily - your drive might be fine. You need to let the BIOS auto detect the drive again and then save your changes, exit and see what happens when you try to boot. It sounds more like your CMOS battery may need to be replaced and if the system was unplugged for an extended period of time with a weak or dead battery, it would lose the hard drive settings and behave just as you have described. Its worth a $3 battery to find out before you toss in the towel.

 

Dodge,

Your information is (should still) be there, the File Allocation Table (FAT) tells the system how to access it. I have had a little success repairing them.

Suggestions:
First try taking out the drive and connecting it as primary slave or secondary master in another machine. If you can't access the data then run Windows Scandisk on it. See if you can get to back up the data that way.

It is a Compaq...does it use a "restore" disk? Try running that without formatting the drive. Try reinstalling Windows.

Get diagnostics utilities from the HDD manufacturer and run them. See if you might be able to restore the FAT.

If you happen to use Norton Utilities, it makes a backup of your "Sector 0" information. You could restore it. Boot to the CD and/or run the "emergency boot floppies ".

I haven't tried antivirus boot floppies, but they may be able to restore FAT (?).

If you happen to have any other drive utilities (say Partition Magic) try running those.


It's been a while since I worked on these problems so I this helps.
Your drive seems to be working OK, it's just that the information can't be accessed.
Matt

 

Thanks again for the extra info.

Rockster2U, the BIOS does see the drive as a 10Gb drive, but possibly because it is a Compaq system the BIOS does not give the auto-detect option. Also, the battery was replaced this year.

mattman, your suggestions mostly tie up with those of a friend of mine who has been playing with computers for years and buys old systems with faults for next to nothing and fixes them. I will try using the drive as is in slave mode to a new one (mentioned above) which I intend to purchase a.s.a.p.

The system was bought from a friend of a friend, and does not have a "restore disk ". I stupidly did not bother to create the rescue disk when I reloaded Windows 98 SE, and wish I had done now. I think I'll put Windows 2000 on the new drive, and see if I can sort out this problem.

I'm going to open the case and check what the Hard Drive is, and see what their website offers in the way of diagnostics.

Anyway, I'll post any results/findings soon.

Dodge

 

Couple of other thoughts - you can look up the drive geometry and manually set it before you run diagnostics if you want to take a crack at it and possibly save some time. Secondly, make sure the CMOS battery is in correctly and securely - jus because it was replaced doesn't guarantee you anything unless you did the replacing and know it is OK. Thirdly, (and I hope not for your sake) a boot virus or BIOS flash gone haywire will give you the same kind of nothing.

Good luck.

 

Just a note on that error message "depth of the directory tree ". It seems that there is directory containing many folders within folders. Had this happen to me. In my case, at the lowest level was a 28 character file name (one of Word's namining doozies) and the DOS scandisk could not handle it.

Just something to watch out for (or to fix if you can access the drive again).

Matt
EDIT: A "maybe "...trying booting again. If it runs the DOS scandisk then "cancel ". If it then boots to Windows run scandisk from there.

 

Thanks again, guys,

Rockster2U, I did replace the battery myself and it is OK. I meant to open the case last night and check the drive itself but I was busy. I'll hopefully have time tonight for that. However, if it is a boot or BIOS virus, how do I sort that out?

mattman, I realise that Windows itself can handle long filenames whereas DOS can only handle a limited length filename. I am also one of those people who have deeply nested folders, so I'm not really helping myself. But all was well until the problem started. I think I'll have to try what you said about running Windows after cancelling Scandisk and see if I can run Scandisk from within Windows.

Anyway, I am grateful for all the advice you've all given me.

Dodge

 

After re-reading this thread, I'm a bit confused but - thats not all that uncommon. If you feel comfortable with remembering your current BIOS settings, you may want to clear CMOS and reset everything to the default setup configuration and see if it will boot that way. If no go, you can always set it back to the current settings as long as you remember them.

Some boot viruses will render your floppy drive useless, so you may then need another similar machine to hot flash your chip after pulling the similar machine's chip while running - not a simple task. Some are also memory resident - another problem. Some can be cleaned quite easily. I'd say, save this ugly thought for last if all else fails. I don't think this is your problem but that doesn't rule it out either - I was just throwing out a few thoughts. Personally, my approach when a boot virus can be confirmed - buy a new chip that is pre-programmed with the most recent bin files - Jack@Badflash.com

I think Mattman is definately steering you in the right direction, but you have to get that puppy started first. This may also be purely academic because if you throw in a new drive and load an OS, you should be able to read most all of your files form this 10 gig drive set as a slave. Thats probably the path of least resistance and the best use of time.

 

Owing to the Christmas period (in which I am extremely busy) I have still not managed to get the 10Gb drive from my system.

But now I am making myself buy the Seagate 40Gb drive after work tonight. I will install Windows etc on it and make the other drive a slave and see what I can see on it.

Merry Christmas!

 

If all else fails...Try to freeze the HD for 2 hours in the freezer...PC Magazine claims it might work to temporarily revive an HD.

 

Hi there,

I got that new HDD after work yesterday, but won't be doing much more now as I'm waiting for Win2000 Pro to install. I've also got a bid in on Ebay for a P3-600MHz CPU to speed up my system a little.

The freezer idea; I've heard about this trick being used to affect EPROMS but never for hard disk media. But then, if all else does fail, there doesn't seem to be any reason why that should not be tried. Thanks for the suggestion.

Merry Christmas.

Dodge

 

Just for your (and my) information, the "dead" hard disk is as follows:

Fujitsu MPQ3102AH

It has a label on it mentioning something about the year 2001, and looks in good condition. I'm amazed that it has gone wrong. Is this something that a hacker/virus could do? I did scan it not long before it went wrong with McAfee.

Perhaps I could just reformat it and use it as an archive drive??

Merry Christmas