Dead HDD ?

[red_devil]

Hey guys,

I have a Seagate Barracuda hdd for more than a year and a half now. Yesterday I was installing windows 7 -- clean install.
When the process was started, everything was normal and I did all the necessary partition etc etc.

Then while the install was continuing, my pc got restarted and after the restart,the PC didn't go past the bootscreen {not the bootloader, just in case anyone gets confused...i mean the screen which splashes Intel and stuff and one where we need to hit delete to get into bios}

Anyways...on that screen, the pc gets stuck up. Even if I hit delete, the pc just hangs in there. It won't even go into the bios.

I was a bit confused and later after trial and error, I figured out that the hard disk was the culprit.

So now I've removed that disk and using an old 40GB one :@

but is there any way that I can recover my harddisk or anything ?

Since I was doing a clean install there is no data nor do I care for any data that could be recovered. All i want is some storage space on that disk...
{buying a new one would be secondary issue.}

Any help or suggestion would be appreciated.

[surinder]

If you are not able get into the BIOS that has nothing to do with HDD. Problem could be elsewhere. I assume your HDD should be alright try to connect it as slave to confirm. If it is got detected in BIOS then try "Acronis disc director". Or if not then your drive is still under warranty get it replaced as you said it is just one and a half year old.

[pimpom]

Originally Posted by red_devil

.........the PC didn't go past the bootscreen {not the bootloader, just in case anyone gets confused...i mean the screen which splashes Intel and stuff and one where we need to hit delete to get into bios}

That's called the "Power-On Self-Test" screen, usually abbreviated to POST (in block letters) as with SATA.

It got stuck in POST because the BIOS sensed the HDD's presence but could not detect it properly. Did you check the connectors or try changing them?

You did not give details about your HDDs. Is the defective one a SATA drive and the 40GB PATA? If they are both SATA or both PATA and you used the same connectors, then that pretty much rules out the connectors. But if you used different connectors for the two drives, a faulty connector could be the cause.

I have come across several cases where a 15-pin SATA power connector caused problems, especially 4-to-15 pin adapters. They work well for some time and then start causing intermittent problems, even damaging the hard disk. If you used such an adapter, you can try changing that.

[red_devil]

oh so its called the POST ... didn't know that :embarasssed:


anyways... i did try to make it a slave but the problem was that once i plugged it in, the pc wouldn't go beyond the POST


yes the disk has warranty but that thing apparently needs to be shipped to Chennai and another problem is that I don't even have the bill

[paroh]

Did u try to change the data cable and the power cord?

[red_devil]

Ok thanks everyone for your suggestions... Now my hard disk is running fine. I don't know what had happened back then but here is what I think got it working again :


The problem was that whenever I plugged in my hard disk and tried to boot my pc, the pc wouldn't go beyond the POST.


So what I did was I removed the power cord of that hard disk while I kept the data cable on and used Spinrite cd to boot. { all of this while I had the other HDD connected}

then while Spinrite was beginning to boot, I plugged in the (damaged) hard disk and removed the old disk's power cord.

Once spinrite showed the screen to check disk {or something similar...can't remember the exact terminology} and selected the option to check the disk in some basic mode or something { that disk called it some option 2 i gues } which took about 10 minutes to complete.

Then Just to be sure, I restarted my PC and this time booted into Gparted { again this time I'd removed my hard disk until I went past POST} and then again plugged in the hard disk once GParted screen was detected. This time I was able to see my disk listed there so I selected the option to clean up the disk and finally everything was alright.


Now with all of this, can anyone tell me what exactly had happened to the disk earlier ?

[surinder]

In your case I assume when you were Installing OS a power failure of a moment or anything else caused the restart by which MBR (master boot record )got corrupted of your HDD.

[chandru_skc]

similar problem with my westren digital 160 gb hard disk..

it failed to boot many times to xp..
after i re wrote the MBR it worked well..
try formatting the entrire the entire harddisk and recreate the partition table..

if anything wrong in this let me know

[red_devil]

@ surinder -- no there was no power failure..and I have back up for PC so I don't think power failure is a cause.

@chandru -- my problem is solved now