hard drive reported dead but recognized by bios

My son's Compaq ran into a problem while my wife was installing a game. She said it asked to make some sort of disk change - I should've looked. FWIW this is a store bought copy of a popular game that has been installed on this computer before. Anyway after that the computer crashed.

Now when I try to boot it says there is a disk error. The bios recognizes the hd - a Maxtor 20GB but when I boot from the XP setup cd it says there is no hard drive installed. Same thing happens when I boot from a linux setup cd - says there is no hard drive found.

Funny thing too is this computer's original hd died some months ago. In that case it made a continuous clicking noise; I have never had a hard drive fail on me before, now two on the same box? Not sure how to proceed.

Marty

 

Ah those were the days! Huge 20G HD.

That model Maxtor tended to have what we called "the Click of death ". One or 2 clicks and dead! But some times they would click intermitenly for a day or 2 before they closed their little eyes forever.

Your wife likly heard its last breath (ah Click)!

Better get a more modern drive!

Sorry.

Mike

 

Thanks Mike, but what I don't get is why does the bios still see it? And there is no clicking - that was on the previous hard drive.

 

Happens often, the circutry to identify is there which is on a chip (solidstate)

But the mechanical parts is what have failed. The Servo or read/write heads!

Mike