Hard drive not found in bios [IBM T30]

Hi Folks,
Well before I continue, Thanks to every one who helped me so far and I have taken advise on board. I have ordered a new HDD 120G but still waiting.

If you read the previous posts you will see I had a spare HDD with Diagnostic software on it which now is backed on to my base system. I then formated and partitioned that drive using PC TOOLS DISK SUITE (We'll call this unit 3).

Now the so called faulty HDD Unit 1, I backed up all 6 partitions onto my main systems HDD with APRICORN EZ Gig 2 software.

Now I cloned all the backed up software to unit 3 Via USB caddie using Apricorn SW. But When I installed this HDD and did a boot up, it would not boot. I then tried booting with Xp disk and recover console, but I got so far and then it asked for Administrator Password , I had not install one!!

Then I formated the active partition via Caddie and install XP from scratch.
The system booted up fine, needless to say some other software didn't work because of the way I had done this. But it proved there was nothing wrong with the drive.

Now that all software was backed up I turned my attention back to the faulty HDD (unit 1).
Via the caddie I did a repair to the MBR and a disk repair using PC TOOLS.
Replaced HDD and wow!! system works perfect. (But there's a twist!!)
If I remove the HDD from My system and install again, on boot up I am back with same old fault (NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND)
I then have to repair MBR Via caddie to get it working again

Can someone put light on this.


The reason am going through all this pain is, in my own job I have to find the fault and not just change a part for the H--l of it.

Cheers for any help


Neil...........

 

If you could get to the Recovery Console you could repair the MBR using that. Try leaving the password blank.

If you can't succeed getting to the Recovery Console, boot to the Hitachi utilities and look for a repair to the MBR with those. Read at the Hitachi website, it might be part of another utility (eg Drive Fitness Test).

Matt

 

WOW, I had an IBM Desktop unti that did the same exact thing for several start ups.

I got to the oint where I just left it turned on and did not have any issue until soon after, the motherboard fried.

I suspected it might have been the MLB all along on my system and it turned out I was right because I scavanged that hdd into another system and the hd has never repeated the issue.

 

OK, I give up - whats MLB supposed to stand for?
Difficult for me to be quiet when I get lost.

 

MLB=Main Logic Board=Motherboard

 

Thank you.