NEW hard disk drive problems...

Hello! I hope someone could help with this problem?

Three months ago I bought a Samsung 40gb 7200rpm hard drive and it has been doing one single, soft "TK" sound every 10 or 20 minutes or so. (I have a 5-year old Dell Pentium III, 450, win98se; Internet Explorer & Outlook Express 6.0). I called once Samsung who suggested to download their diagnostic utility... BUT, the site said to backup everything FIRST or all my sutff will be wiped out! I hesitated then decided NOT to do it since I still haven't had the chance to learn how to backup everything - it's not so easy, especially for me, a total tech illiterate!

I called the mfr. again, this time the technical dept. and was told not necessary to test since if it made a TK sound it was defective and to send it back for a new or reconditioned one. Or, to make it easier to change, they could send it first and I would send back the defective one within one month or they'll charge my credit card.

I had to pay a technician $100 to mirror my old hd into this new one...and now I'll have to pay this again! How terribly unfair this type of "warranty "! I could hardly afford the first $100, let alone ANOTHER one now...

Would anyone know of a good website where I could follow step by step how to mirror this hd myself, since I would have the 2 hd now? Though I never even saw the insides of the tower, I thought I could try if someone knows of a really easy and good website? Or better - could this be cured wihout taking the hd out of the tower???

Anticipating my thanks for any help in this matter. Adela

 

As far as copying the drive take a close look at the CD that came, or comes, with the with the drive. I can't speak for other makes but I swear by Maxtor drives and there is always a utility on their CDs where you hook up the new drive and it totally automates the process. Then you just remove the old drive.

To be honest, if you have a CD burner I'd just burn a copy of everything on the drive that can not be reinstalled... data files, save game directories, e-mail, bookmarks, etc.. Basically anything that you don't have an install CD for.

************IMPORTANT NOTE!!!***********

If you do not have an install CD for your operating system you are not able to do this!!!! Also, if you do not have a CD to install your main board drivers, sound, modem, etc. you will not be able to install these items without first going to the manufacturer's site and downloading and burning such drivers!!!!!

Then just install the new drive and re-install everything. I do this anytime I replace a motherboard or make a major change. ( tend to do such things often... )

Jay

 

Adela,

Win Win98SE, it is VERY easy to make a clone of your hard drive. To start off, make a Win98SE Startup bootup disk:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Add/Remove Programs.
2. Click the Startup Disk tab, and then click Create Disk.
3. Label a disk "Windows 98 Startup Disk," insert the disk in your disk drive when you are prompted, and then click OK.
4. Click OK to quit Add/Remove Programs.
5. Remove the Startup disk, and then store the disk in a safe place.

INSTALL the NEW DRIVE
1. Open the PC and install the new drive (connect both power - the 4 wire connector and the wide grey ribbon cable to the drive - red/black stripe on the cable goes on pin 1 of the drive)
2. Boot the PC and it should see the new drive automatically.
3. Boot off the floppy you just made
4. At the A prompt (A:\), type FDISK and press Enter
5. Answer Y to the the question about large disk drive support
6. Answer any other questions that might come up with the default answer
7. At the menu, there will be 5 options. Choose option 5 to change drives. Choose drive 2.
8. Back at the main menu, you will see the drive listing as 2 in the upper part of the screen.
9. Choose option 1 from the main menu.
10. Choose option 1 from Create a new DOS partition
11. Answer the questions with a Yes
12. After the drive is all setup in Fdisk, press Esc to go back to the A prompt.
13. Press Cntrl-Alt-Del to reboot the PC and leave the floppy in the PC.
14. At A prompt, type fomat D:
15. Answer the questions.
16. After the drive is formatted, reboot the PC without the floppy in the drive.

NORMAL BOOTUP
1. Boot into Windows with both drives in the system
2. Disable your screen saver.
3. Click on Start, Run and type in the following:
xcopy c:\*.* d: /e/h/r/c/k
4. Sit back, and wait until Xcopy gets finished
5. After it is finished copying, close that window and then restart your PC with that floppy you made in the floppy drive.

REMOVE the BAD DRIVE
1. With the PC turned off, remove the ribbon cable from the old drive and the new one.
2. Connect the ribbon cable connector that was on the old drive and connect it to the new drive.
3. Make sure you did not disconnect the power cable (4 wire connector) from the new drive.
4. Bootup your computer

BOOT from the START FLOPPY
1. Boot off the floppy
2. At the A prompt (A:\), type FDISK and press Enter
3. Answer Y to the the question about large disk drive support
4. Answer any other questions that might come up with the default answer
5. At the menu, there will be 4 options (since you removed the old drive, you will only have 4 options now).
6. Choose option 2 to set the C drive as active.
7. Exit Fdisk
8. Reboot the PC without the floppy drive

You should be all up and running now.

George

 

From a little different perspective - the manufacturer agreed to replace your drive, sight unseen and no questions asked - that sounds pretty fair to me.

As to cloning your drive - you elected to do this the first time around when you purchased a new drive so that has no bearing on your current situation. Now, you will be getting a replacement and the issue is, what is the manufacturers responsibility and what is your responsibility? Their responsibility is to replace a defective drive - they did that. Your responsibility is to install it, clone it or whatever. You should be happy the mfg has been so accomodating. This apparant "TK" could be the result of some other basic defect in your machine like a low voltage situation, bad capacitor or power spike.

Based upon your reported level of experience and your post, my recommendation is that you take this back to the very same qualified technician. $100 in New York doesn't even cover a parking ticket so I'd say you've got a pretty deal going.

 

jaylatch & iclarius

You better get her jumpers setup first or this is going to become a pretty long thread.

 

Sigh.... Very true!!!! On jumpers.

If you do any exchange where both drives are in the system at the same time you must set the new drive to slave if in the same channel (cable). If using a different cable for each drive you can just unhook any other cd or whatever from the second channel and leave the jumpers alone. When done just unhook the ribbon cable from the old drive and plug it into the new one. As long as you have all the install disks you can still just do the re-install on everything. I find that with my method I can install everything on my system with all e-mails and such intact in a long evening. Please don't take offense, none meant, but from your post I say give it a full day.

If you don't follow this I'll get my roomie involved. She does pretty well at translateing what I say into english when I explaine what I'm saying to her...

Jay

 

Hold everything!!!!!!!!!!

I just had a thought, sometimes I'm stupid! Guess thats what happens when your watching TV in a PIP on your monitor...

First thing you need to do is goto your control panel under power options and see if your settings are set to turn off the drive after just a short time. I set mine to 3 hours or never. It's not impossible that if your drive shutdown time is set real low it could be the drive comming back up to speed that you are hearing.

Jay

 

Lets give Adela a break here ........

By default, Samsung drives are shipped jumpered as master, but ..... The Tech that cloned her existing drive probably has it jumpered as CS so he/she didn't have to play with it twice. That means she would jumper her soon to be replacement as CS and put it on the intermediate header of the same cable. Adela note: if your current "TK" drive is jumpered as master, then jumper your new one as slave and put it on the intermediate connector of the same cable (assuming you have two 40 pin headers on that cable). There will be a little folded tan instruction sheet that comes with that drive to show you how to jumper it.

Jay - Adela is going to need some more help to detect and setup her new hard drive geometry - the secondary device on that IDE channel could be set to none but even if its not, we can't assume that modern Gateway machine is going to auto detect it.

Adela - not meant to offend, but take this to a shop. Its worth a $100 to you to do this before it becomes a $200 project.

 

Rocket,

She said she had a DEll. Dell uses a cable select operation and all drives today seem to be shipped with CS selected so I did not mention it.

Maybe I should have mentioned it but it added another layer of complexity.

George

 

Adela,

Actually you should probably listen to Rockster2U. As you've described yourself as a beginner I never should of gotten so techy. I could sit there and zip, zap, powy, go right through it. However trying to guide a novice through something like that could end up costing you more in the long run.

Just for grins and giggles I would check power settings in your control panel just to make sure it's not set real low for turning off the drives.

Sorry, new to the forum and I need to learn to pay more attention to the experience level the person says they have...

Jay

 

jay, George, and Rock...I'm SO much in awe at your expertise and interest in helping!!! Thanks ever so very very much!

Unfortunately for me, it seems changing the HD is much more complicated than I was hoping for, and I thought perhaps I will have to follow Rockster2U's suggestion and resign myself to pay another $100 to make that cloning again...and God help if I get ANOTHER defective one... LOL! And, my good friend, NO offense taken whatsoever - on the contrary! I feel so indebted to all of you.

Jay: no CD came with the HD, and I don't have a CD burner... Though I will see if I can buy a CD burner sometime just to make backing up easier and thorough...and, Jay, NO! You are not stupid at all, considering the amount of time, concentration, and work you guys put into helping others here.

George: Your step-by-step instructions are very clear and easy to follow...if I dared to try them...

Rock: I agree with you that I must pay again for cloning since I'm not able to do it myself as I once thought... As to your suggestion: "This apparant "TK" could be the result of some other basic defect in your machine like a low voltage situation, bad capacitor or power spike." I'd be interested in trying to find out, only if it's not complicated. How canI verify these things?

At whom I'm terribly angry is Samsung for letting pass a defective HD (yes, I know nothing is perfect, and they did a good thing offering to send a new one...) but HDs not only are expensive in themselves, but also with (in my case) the labor of a techi!

I intend to keep in my Word all of this most valuable and clear information you all gave me, in case I may sometime dare to try some in which case this will be extremely helpful! But first of all I MUST learn how to backup everything.

I read somewhere that someone had a HD making lots of noises...and it lasted for years! So I think that before cloning this again, I'll learn right away how to properly backup everything, and then I can take a chance and continue to use this HD until it dies...

Do you all think it's a good idea? Thanks ever so very much for evertyhing! Adela

 

Well I am not sure how long your drive will last but I sent in a drive to Maxtor that began to make a fairly loud thunk noise. It was clear the drive was on its way out with the noise it was making however I had a WD that makes a very soft thunk noise and its over 3 years now with no signs of failing. If only you could back up your data you could use the samsung diagnostic utility.

 

George:

Correction - her machine is 5-6 years old and dell wasn't using CS then. Correction - Samsung IDE HDD's shipped with default pinouts jumpered as master.

But - point well taken - another layer of complexity which was my point all along.

 

New hard disk drive problems

I will follow the same decision you made with your noisy HD, Chuck, especially since my HD noise is hardly audible...And as you say, I'll concentrate right now in learning how to properly back up the entire stuff I have in my computer. I guess you could call it an experiment...

Thanks so much!!! Adela

P.S. What is "jumpers "??? Also, would anyone know why many times the smilies don't register where I have the cursor??? Thanks.

 

"P.S. What is "jumpers "??? Also, would anyone know why many times the smilies don't register where I have the cursor??? Thanks. "

Being very careful to not get techy

There are basically two types of hard drive, IDE and SCSI. Since the SCSI type has nothing to do with anything in this thread we'll ignore it. For each IDE connector on the mother board you can connect two drives. This can be hard drives, CD ROM, DVD... To connect them there is a wide ribbon cable with, usually, three connectors. One connector goes to the IDE connector on the mother board. The other two connect to the drives. The system must know which drive is which. On each IDE you have a Master (Primary) and a Slave (Secondary). Here come the jumpers to save the day . On the edge of the drive there a series of connector pins in two rows. I've seen a total number of pins from 6 to 10. Anyway, by connecting two of the pins you can designate the drive as a Master, Slave, or Cable Select. You use a jumper to connect the pins. They are real small, thin rectangles that if you look at an end you will see two metal lined holes. The metal lining is what connects the pins. They are about the simplest thing there is on a computer and one of the most critical. There are other uses for jumpers than just drives. They have MANY uses but that would be another thread.

Now that the drive has been set as Master or Slave the system can know which is which.

Cable Select, or CS, is a setting where the system knows which drive is which by it's position on the cable. Myself, I prefer to set as Master and Slave.

Jumpers 101 concluded!

Jay

P.S. I'll leave the smilies to someone that knows the board better.

P.P.S. For the record it is usually best to have a burner set as a Master if possible.

 

Adela, I must say that I am inspired by your fortitude .

You will need to do some research. The answers here are what you need, but the technical background will need to be researched. Go to the Samsung website and see if they have tutorials on drive replacement (I think their "support" is pretty basic). There are tutorials at the Maxtor website, Seagate website and the Hitatchi website...not sure about Western Digital.
www.maxtor.com
www.seagate.com
www.wd.com
www.hitachi.com

Is there anyone you know that could work with with you?

Matt

 

Hi Jay and oh thanks so much for the explicit "Jumpers 101" lesson! I went to my old WD HD and looked at those pins you mention and they're sure there: 39 at the left (not sure if the one pin in the middle is missing as I see the little whole), 8 pins next to it, all formed in double rows, and at the right single line of 4 pins a little thicker, (BTW, this HD came with the puter and lasted 4 yrs). I didn't dare opening the puter to see the rest of it, but your thorough and clear explanation more than suffices...I bet you guys could (should?) be teachers if not already! Each one of you are giving a precious lesson on this complicated matter. Thanks so very much!

And, Mattman, I wish it were true about my fortitude! But I do try as much as I can. Thanks for your suggestion to go to Samsung tutorials about HDs and I'll certainly try it, but getting them from other brands is the same thing?

As to having someone that could work with me...it would be ideal (2 heads work better than one), but everyone I know knows even less than I and most of them don't even have a computer...and say "I don't want to start with that" as they see all the headaches we are all having... LOL! However I once put a notice on the bulletin board where I live asking for a computer techi, and only one answered and wanted $225 per hour...I may try again, this time asking for a "hobby computer" person who'll charge more moderately.

Thanks very much to both! Adela

 

The tutorials will be the same thing because the basic setup and the way they run will be the same. You should look through all the tutorials, some will add a little more information than others. You won't be able able to use the utilities of the other brands, but the setup of the drives will be the same, all IDE drives have the same basic jumper settings and the arrangement on the ribbon cables is the same. The different tutorials should give you a good basic technical background, just realise that if they talk about something specific to their drive (like utilities) that it does not relate to yours.

Once you get a feel for the technical side, come back and recheck what has been written earlier in this post.

Another reference:
http://www.pcguide.com/proc/physinst/hdd.htm

I am hoping you will get to a stage where you feel confident in doing it yourself (you will see from the tutorials that it is not really hard, but there can be a few tricky parts).

Matt

 

Adela,

The pin you see 'missing on the 39, actually a 40 pin connector, serves a definate purpose. This pin is not used by the system for the hard drive so some common sence type person came up with the idea that if we leave out that pin and plug the hole it would line up with on the cable you can not put the cable on upside down. The plugged hole in the cable would line up with an actual pin. One of the few times you'll ever see a sign that an engineer has a brain!