Confused by temporary hdd failure

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul
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Paul

My daughter's away at college. She called me and told me she booted up her
PC (uses Win98SE) and encountered an error message that said (paraphrasing):
"primary hard drive failure" or "failed to find primary hard drive." At any
rate, it appeared to her that the hdd had "crashed," so she thought...

I had a friend pick it up and try to check it out at his home. However, he
told me it booted just fine for him, though in safe mode. He said he
eventually got it to boot in Windows mode without any further problems.

What might have been the problem? Is this the sign of a loose connection, or
perhaps a hdd going bad (but not yet there), etc?
 
My daughter's away at college. She called me and told me she booted up her
PC (uses Win98SE) and encountered an error message that said (paraphrasing):
"primary hard drive failure" or "failed to find primary hard drive." At any
rate, it appeared to her that the hdd had "crashed," so she thought...

I had a friend pick it up and try to check it out at his home. However, he
told me it booted just fine for him, though in safe mode. He said he
eventually got it to boot in Windows mode without any further problems.

What might have been the problem? Is this the sign of a loose connection, or
perhaps a hdd going bad (but not yet there), etc?
Click to expand...

It could be a loose power connection.



-Barry
========
Web page: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~barry.og
Atheist, radio scanner, LIPD information.
 
By "power connection," did you mean the PC's power supply cable that
connects to the back of the drive?

 
My daughter's away at college. She called me and told me she booted up her
PC (uses Win98SE) and encountered an error message that said (paraphrasing):
"primary hard drive failure" or "failed to find primary hard drive." At any
rate, it appeared to her that the hdd had "crashed," so she thought...
Click to expand...
I had a friend pick it up and try to check it out at his home. However,
he told me it booted just fine for him, though in safe mode. He said he
eventually got it to boot in Windows mode without any further problems.
Click to expand...
What might have been the problem?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately for you, that particular symptom can be due to a
variety of things, none of which are that easy to identify remotely.
Is this the sign of a loose connection,
Click to expand...

Yes, it can certainly be due to that, either the power
connector on the drive itself where the little metal tunnels
the pins go into can open up over time, or even just
a loose ribbon cable etc. Certainly worth trying a different
power connector, say from one of the cdrom drives etc.
or perhaps a hdd going bad (but not yet there), etc?
Click to expand...

Yes, it can certainly be caused by that too.

It can also be due to the motherboard going bad, or the power supply.

Or just a flakey ribbon cable. That one is cheap to try.

The only viable approach is to check the easiest to check first
and move thru the possibilitys if it keeps behaving like that.

Certainly worth running the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic
on the drive to see if the drive is reporting itself as going bad.
Turn SMART on in the motherboard bios for the same reason.

Obviously if you can swap the hard drive into another system
easily it would be worth trying that if nothing is obviously loose
and the diagnostic comes up clean. See if the fault moves with the
hard drive basically. Not necessarily that easy in your situation tho.

If those cheap checks dont fix it, I'd normally swap
the power supply next and the motherboard last.

Obviously if its overclocked, try running within specs etc.
 
Unfortunately for you, that particular symptom can be due to a
variety of things, none of which are that easy to identify remotely.


Yes, it can certainly be due to that, either the power
connector on the drive itself where the little metal tunnels
the pins go into can open up over time,
Click to expand...

I've had lots of trouble with those connectors. Manufacturers get
pretty cheap and don't make the metal springy enough. I generally
will take a small jeweler's screwdriver and use it to compress the
little metal tunnels prior to plugging it into a drive.

Your other advice is good. I recently had a 60gig drive giving me the
same kind of boot-up problems. I replaced/upgraded with a 120 gig,
and put the suspect drive in an external USB case I had lying around.
For some strange reason, it hasn't had a single problem since removing
it from the main system.
 
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