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computer help anyone?

anyone here who knows anything about computer hard drives and hardware and all that junk?

i'm desperate and pissed off, so until i can get a hold of maxtor on monday maybe someone knows of a simple way to fix my piece of shit of a hdd

here's the problem:
i have 2 hdds. both maxtor. 1 is primary where the OS is and the other one is secondary for storage. up until this afternoon, everything worked fine. then, out of nowhere, i wasnt able to access some folders on the storage drive. the error msg said 'the file or directory is corrupt and unaccesable' so i tried to reboot, and couldnt with the storage drive plugged in. the message i get is 'unable to boot OS. may be due to a virus' or something like that.

i ran a maxtor diagnostic. it said it found errors and fixed them. tried running partition magic diagnostic, its taking too long, will do it overnight.

so yeah, if i unplug the storage drive, everything works fine, except im missing 200gb

anyone with any tips and suggestions, please feel free

btw, i had this problem before, fixed it by wiping everything off the drive. i could do it this time, but i wanna make sure the problem doesnt come back 2 months later

maxtor is notorious fOR bad HDs

quote:

Originally posted by AquaYak maxtor is notorious fOR bad HDs

*sigh*
well, my western digital is fcked up too and has been collecting dust for a while now

unable to boot to OS may also be caused by the computers motherboard (main board) trying to start up an operating system from your storage drive, that is set as the first boot device.

this MAY be the case. but since you shouldnt have changed any settings then MAYBE your drive is okay

i would doublecheck your bios settings and make sure that it is booting from your OS maxtor drive not your 200GB drive.

if any of your friends has an external enclosure.

you could hook up the drive to your computer via firewire or USB 2.0. and see if the drive is toast that way.

I backup all my data to an external enclosure. makes things soooo much easier when transfering any files or in case something bad happens.

quote:

Originally posted by kanadianiceman unable to boot to OS may also be caused by the computers motherboard (main board) trying to start up an operating system from your storage drive, that is set as the first boot device. this MAY be the case. but since you shouldnt have changed any settings then MAYBE your drive is okay i would doublecheck your bios settings and make sure that it is booting from your OS maxtor drive not your 200GB drive.

the first time this happened, the problem was exactly because of this. i accidently mixed up secondary and primary drives.

but i dont see how this is the case now because since everything was fixed (or i think it was anyways). i checked bios, everything is set up the way its supposed to be, in the bootable devices part, i have the primary drive with the OS selected

im just talking to mark right now, he suggested running fixboot. and he had the same problem too but never got it fixed


gonna try to work on the problem tomorrow, cant get too upset before seeing ferry

btw, thank you all for the suggestions

hmm weird, those things are always headaches and can really kill your day if not week.

also try doublechecking your ribbons, the pins on the hdds, i had a brand new seagate hdd, that i just installed one time, and i bent over a pin in the first 10 min of installing the drive. this can easily happen if you are installing and removing the ribbons alot.

doublecheck jumpers etc etc.

unfourtunatley it is usually 2 things with computers

- user error (easy to fix)
- Hardware Issues (not so great)

i would reccomend trying to get a friend to ghost the drive ASAP so that any information on there can be mirrored.

then if that fails, have the drive sent back to maxtor for recovery if any is possible.

Usually everything can be saved if you have not heard any grinding or excessive clicking in the drive, this usually means the heads (needle looking arms that read off the platters inside the drive) have lost calibration and are crashing into the platters basicly physically destroying them, data and all.

i have all my music (140gb worth, mostly sets) on just one hdd, if i lost that, it would be a very sad year.

best of luck,

maxtor won't recover anything. if its under warranty, they'll send you a new one.. that's about it.

i can't make any other suggestions than those already made.

only option not suggested that could work, and its one of the last things to try, is a reinstall of the OS. Not a CLEAN install, a reinstall.

If you have xp, which I'm sure you do, boot with the CD, hit enter to install Windows, then 'R' to reinstall. Maybe Windows will sort things out.

If the problem is hardware, well, that won't fix crap.

Which version of Windows?

What version of Windows are you using? What file system are you using, FAT32 or NTFS?

I see you are using PartitionMagic. Did you install and are you using BootMagic as well? If you use PartitionMagic to change any of your hard drives, it will do things with the Master Boot Records and FAT tables for each drive and partition. You will no longer be able to use Windows' FDISK command on your Emergency Boot Disk to set the Active partition (you do have a Windows Emergency Boot Disk, right?) You will only be able to set the Active partition with your PartitionMagic Bootable Disk Set (you have one of those too, right?).

Have you tried connecting your storage drive to your second IDE channel (IDE1) to see if it still works or not?

Hard drives do not last forever. Once you get a bad sector, you will start to encounter problems. If the hard drive can't map out the bad sector(s), then the file(s) stored on the bad sector(s) won't be accessible. Reformatting the drive will only give you the same grief down the road. Replace the hard drive! Don't dump your WD HDD yet - it should still have data on it that can be recovered.
We've still got one of those of 2.5" pre-IDE drives on a 486 computer at work that's still running on DOS 5. As long as it doesn't develop any bad sectors, it should continue to work.

That's about all I can suggest over a forum. Your computer really needs to be examined in detail in order to determine what approach to take. There are BIOS settings and operating system settings that need to be checked over. Keep your hardware manuals and software installation CDs and always back up your data regularly!

ok, well, im running win2k on ntfs. i bought this drive in december so i was hoping it wouldnt get messed up this fast. i did plug and unplug cables a lot in the last couple of months, but only because of the problems i've been having with hdds. no weird sounds come from it, all sounds ok. jumpers are all set like they're supposed to be.

tomorrow i'll try fixboot.exe and reinstalling windows if that doesnt work then i guess i'll send it off for replacement. fortunately most of the data is backed up cause i saved bunch of it before formating a month ago

i dont have partition magic installed right now either, had it, so will check that tomorrow too. will also try connecting storage drive as secondary

about the WD, its clean and formatted. the weird thing about it is it works as a slave but not as a master, cant figure out why

You know about the master/slave jumper on the back of the HDD, right? The way you use the jumper will also depend on how the motherboard is designed. I think it's Master, Slave, or CS (Cable Select) depending.

Since your Maxtor secondary drive just became inoperative by itself it sounds like that would not be the problem there though. Might be the drive going bad.

I have WD and Maxtor in my PC.

Be careful about those drive connector pins it's easy to bend one and the drive will be erratic. My friend the dentist (who should be less clumsy) bent one while installing a second drive.

quote:

Originally posted by apri_peel about the WD, its clean and formatted. the weird thing about it is it works as a slave but not as a master, cant figure out why

if i remember correctly WD hd will run as primary only when its jumpers are set to CS not master or slave..haven't been around computer parts lately so I might be wrong. As for why your Maxtor hard drive died 2 possibility. Try changing the IDE cable as someone mention also it might be the primary IDE on the motherboard that is dead or not functioning properly. Of course changing IDE cable is the easiest. I would also unplug your 200GB hard drive and just running the Maxtor and see if it boots up....good luck!

if i remember correctly WD hd will run as primary only when its jumpers are set to CS not master or slave..haven't been around computer parts lately so I might be wrong. As for why your Maxtor hard drive died 2 possibility. Try changing the IDE cable as someone mention also it might be the primary IDE on the motherboard that is dead or not functioning properly. Of course changing IDE cable is the easiest. I would also unplug your 200GB hard drive and just running the Maxtor and see if it boots up....good luck!

if i remember correctly WD hd will run as primary only when its jumpers are set to CS not master or slave..haven't been around computer parts lately so I might be wrong. As for why your Maxtor hard drive died 2 possibility. Try changing the IDE cable as someone mention also it might be the primary IDE on the motherboard that is dead or not functioning properly. Of course changing IDE cable is the easiest. I would also unplug your 200GB hard drive and just running the Maxtor and see if it boots up....good luck!

quote:

Originally posted by apri_peel ok, well, im running win2k on ntfs. i bought this drive in december so i was hoping it wouldnt get messed up this fast. i did plug and unplug cables a lot in the last couple of months, but only because of the problems i've been having with hdds. no weird sounds come from it, all sounds ok. jumpers are all set like they're supposed to be. tomorrow i'll try fixboot.exe and reinstalling windows if that doesnt work then i guess i'll send it off for replacement. fortunately most of the data is backed up cause i saved bunch of it before formating a month ago i dont have partition magic installed right now either, had it, so will check that tomorrow too. will also try connecting storage drive as secondary about the WD, its clean and formatted. the weird thing about it is it works as a slave but not as a master, cant figure out why

Are both drives formatted as NTFS? Is your Storage drive formatted as a Primary or Logical partition?

What's your boot device sequence? FDD>CD>IDE0>IDE1?

There isn't really an Emergency Startup Disk for Windows 2000 or XP. You need to use your installation CD. Actually, there is a program you can download from Microsoft to create a Startup Disk Set onto 6 FDs, at least for WinXP.

PartitionMagic is a great program, but it has its limitations. You cannot copy Windows 2000 or XP Primary partitions to another Hidden Primary Partition. Well, you can but they won't work. I use DriveImage to clone the operating systems.

Try connecting the Storage drive to the Secondary IDE channel. It's probably already set up as the SLAVE Device since it was on the Primary IDE Channel, so disconnect your current SLAVE Device (CD-ROM?) and see if your Storage drive at least works.

If you have an extra spot on one of your IDE cables, you can connect your WD drive. Just remember that if the WD drive is the only device on the IDE cable, it must be set as a SINGLE Device! MASTER/SLAVE/CABLE SELECT does not apply in this situation. If you have something else connected to that IDE cable, then normal MASTER/SLAVE settings apply. I don't bother with CS at all. You could also add an IDE Controller Card to allow you to add 4 more IDE Devices (up to 8 IDE devices in total!).

You can easily reassign drive letters permanently in Win2K and XP to keep them from changing all the time when new devices are added.

Tired of typing now! Check back later!

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