Really bizarre hard disk problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter forte agent
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forte agent

Hopefully I'm explaining this good enough...

Friend's PC has a Fujitsu 20 Gb HD which is screwed from all I can
determine. The PC does not recognize the HD anymore but I was able one
time to get into it. When I did get in I did a scandisk, etc and found
tons of bad sectors, confirming to me that in general the HD is on
it's last legs. On restart the unit could no longer be seen again by
the PC and I am unable to get it to see it anymore (I guess it was
pure BS luck that I did see it once to begin with).

I tried the HD in my own PC which powers on fine but it as well is
unable to see the HD as either Master or Slave on both the Primary or
Secondary connectors.

So I took my 2 HDs (40 Gb each, Western Digital & Maxtor) and tried
them on his machine. The screwy thing is that for both of my good HDs
when I plug either one into his machine the PC will not even start
up!! ....and yes I do have power to the MB because the on-board LED
lights up.

I have never seen this before so hopefully someone out there has and
can give me an idea what to check?

His specs is a Celeron 950 on an ASUS TUSL2 motherboard.

One more thing is that I compared the power requirements of the HDs
and they are a good match so that would not be an issue. Besides, his
unit has very little extra peripherals while mine is loaded to the
max.

Any help greatly appreciated!

TIA
 
tons of bad sectors, confirming to me that in general the HD is on
it's last legs.
Click to expand...

looks like it has no legs left..

the drive is now ready for the junk bin...
however if there is any data on it you were trying to recover...
i;ve heard a few reports that if you put the harddrive in the freezer for a
while
then once it;s cold put it back in the machine
you may be able to use it just long enough to recover some of the data
 
looks like it has no legs left..

the drive is now ready for the junk bin...
however if there is any data on it you were trying to recover...
i;ve heard a few reports that if you put the harddrive in the freezer for a
while
then once it;s cold put it back in the machine
you may be able to use it just long enough to recover some of the data
Click to expand...

Yeah I could give that a shot. However the big thing is that by trying
2 other drives on the unit (2 good drives from my machine) the unit
does not even power on at all!!! I can;t figure it out and would like
to solve it before buying a brand new one, in case that does not work
either.
 
So I took my 2 HDs (40 Gb each, Western Digital & Maxtor) and tried
them on his machine. The screwy thing is that for both of my good HDs
when I plug either one into his machine the PC will not even start
up!! ....and yes I do have power to the MB because the on-board LED
lights up.
Click to expand...

Plug the IDE cables on the right way.
 
forte said:
Yeah I could give that a shot. However the big thing is that by trying
2 other drives on the unit (2 good drives from my machine) the unit
does not even power on at all!!! I can;t figure it out and would like
to solve it before buying a brand new one, in case that does not work
either.
Click to expand...

This is really dumb of me asking this, but you did check the BIOS to
make sure on your friends PC that it wasnt set specifically for his PC.
I will assume that you know that you havent got the cable the wrong
way round. :-)
 
mcr wrote:

Snipped

Oops said:
This is really dumb of me asking this, but you did check the BIOS to
make sure on your friends PC that it wasnt set specifically for his PC.
I will assume that you know that you havent got the cable the wrong way
round. :-)
Click to expand...
I meant to say "...specifically for his hard disk"
 
Hopefully I'm explaining this good enough...

Friend's PC has a Fujitsu 20 Gb HD which is screwed from all I can
determine. The PC does not recognize the HD anymore but I was able one
time to get into it. When I did get in I did a scandisk, etc and found
tons of bad sectors, confirming to me that in general the HD is on
it's last legs. On restart the unit could no longer be seen again by
the PC and I am unable to get it to see it anymore (I guess it was
pure BS luck that I did see it once to begin with).

I tried the HD in my own PC which powers on fine but it as well is
unable to see the HD as either Master or Slave on both the Primary or
Secondary connectors.
Click to expand...

Did you check the jumpers on the Fujitsu when you put it into your
machine?..and also for any drive you would have left in your machine
that was on the same controller. You might have needed to do that.
So I took my 2 HDs (40 Gb each, Western Digital & Maxtor) and tried
them on his machine. The screwy thing is that for both of my good HDs
when I plug either one into his machine the PC will not even start
up!! ....and yes I do have power to the MB because the on-board LED
lights up.

I have never seen this before so hopefully someone out there has and
can give me an idea what to check?
Click to expand...

Its important to check the jumpers on the drive when you move from
machine to machine. The drives probably didn't work because you
forgot to change the jumpers to accommodate the machine.

There's too many variations to go into this in depth. But, for
instance, if you had your drives both on the same controller, then you
must connect BOTH drives on the same controller on the other machine.
More than likely, you tried one drive at a time.

If you give us more details...on how many drives were on each cable,
etc. on each machine...we might be able to go into more detail to
explain this to you.


Hope ya'll have a nice weekend...

Trent


Proud member of the Roy Rogers fan club!
 
Did you check the jumpers on the Fujitsu when you put it into your
machine?..and also for any drive you would have left in your machine
that was on the same controller. You might have needed to do that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the jumpers were set as a master with no slave drive present.
Its important to check the jumpers on the drive when you move from
machine to machine. The drives probably didn't work because you
forgot to change the jumpers to accommodate the machine.

There's too many variations to go into this in depth. But, for
instance, if you had your drives both on the same controller, then you
must connect BOTH drives on the same controller on the other machine.
More than likely, you tried one drive at a time.

If you give us more details...on how many drives were on each cable,
etc. on each machine...we might be able to go into more detail to
explain this to you.
Click to expand...

No worries there, I had it all correct.

To me it just doesn't make sense that the PC with the bad HD will not
even power on with any drive except the corrupt one connected...

Cheers.
 
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