Possible hard disk failure

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul Carr
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Paul Carr

Excuse my complete ignorance on this subject but I have gone as far as
I can without advice.

Last week I had a power surge from a lightning hit which seems to have
brought about the death knell for an aging PC. The surge seems to have
got to my PC through the modem cable (power cables had surge
protection) and although nothing looks damaged, the old PC will not
startup.

I retrieved the hard disks from it, the original Fujitsu 6.4 Gb and a
much more recent Western Digital Caviar 60 Gb one. Again neither
appear damaged so I tried to add them as slave drives to another PC.

This is where the real problems start. Despite trying all the jumper
settings you could shake a stick at, neither disk is recognised. I
have followed what seems to be the set procedure, connecting power to
both disks and setting up the ribbon cable, black 40 pin connector to
the main drive and grey 40 pin to the slave drive. I have also tried
"main & slave" jumper settings and "cable select" to no avail.

Perhaps naively, I thought that setting this up as outlined above
would mean that on startup, the BIOS would recognise a new drive and
work me through the installation. Not so! What actually happened was
that the boot screen (a nice "Compaq" logo) stayed onscreen for ages
followed by a one liner saying that there was disk failure.

Is it ususal that in these circumstances even the primary main drive
is not recognised?

If it is the case that the WDC disk is kaput, then so be it but I am
unwilling to bin it until I am sure.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Paul Carr
 
Excuse my complete ignorance on this subject
but I have gone as far as I can without advice.
Click to expand...
Last week I had a power surge from a lightning hit which
seems to have brought about the death knell for an aging
PC. The surge seems to have got to my PC through the
modem cable (power cables had surge protection) and
although nothing looks damaged, the old PC will not startup.
Click to expand...
I retrieved the hard disks from it, the original Fujitsu 6.4 Gb and a
much more recent Western Digital Caviar 60 Gb one. Again neither
appear damaged so I tried to add them as slave drives to another PC.
Click to expand...
This is where the real problems start. Despite trying all the jumper
settings you could shake a stick at, neither disk is recognised. I
have followed what seems to be the set procedure, connecting power to
both disks and setting up the ribbon cable, black 40 pin connector to
the main drive and grey 40 pin to the slave drive. I have also tried
"main & slave" jumper settings and "cable select" to no avail.
Click to expand...
Perhaps naively, I thought that setting this up as outlined
above would mean that on startup, the BIOS would recognise
a new drive and work me through the installation. Not so!
Click to expand...

You do need to have the drive type in the bios set to
AUTO for that drive before the bios will even look for it.
What actually happened was that the boot screen
(a nice "Compaq" logo) stayed onscreen for ages
followed by a one liner saying that there was disk failure.
Click to expand...

Thats a bit of a worry. It could mean that the drives are dead.
Do they actually spin up ? Best to check that with the drive
loose on the tabletop and see if you can feel/hear it spin up.

Compaqs tend to use cable select, but not always.
Is it ususal that in these circumstances even
the primary main drive is not recognised?
Click to expand...

Compaqs can be pretty quirky with drive changes.
Those drives may well work fine in a non compaq.
 
Rod Speed said:
You do need to have the drive type in the bios set to
AUTO for that drive before the bios will even look for it.


Thats a bit of a worry. It could mean that the drives are dead.
Do they actually spin up ? Best to check that with the drive
loose on the tabletop and see if you can feel/hear it spin up.

Compaqs tend to use cable select, but not always.


Compaqs can be pretty quirky with drive changes.
Those drives may well work fine in a non compaq.
Click to expand...

Thanks all for helpful responses - on the verge of giving the drives
back to nature....

Paul
 
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