[dba-Tech] Almost dead hard disk

This second small partion (probably 8 or 10 MB  or so) is either the
system tools partition of your computer or the 8MB space Windows keeps
free when formatting in NTFS. So I wouldn't bother about that.

I would advice you to try to put this disk as a primary on your second
IDE controller in that other system and try to boot normaly on that
system. Then scan the faulty disk for virusses from your working system.
Also perform a checkdisk (mark fix en scan surface)

You could also try to see if its a MBR problem.
Format a floppy disk on a XP computer, copy the boot.ini, ntldr and
ntdetect.com to the floppy and alter the boot.ini file if necesary to
point to the disknumber and windows folder of the corrupt disk.
Try booting from the floppy on the corrupt system.
This way you can test if it is a MBR or track 0 problem.

There is a command called fixmbr to fix MBR but I'm not if you can do
this from a working system where the disk added. You can from the
windows XP command prompt (recovery console?).
You need to boot from the XP CD for this

Erwin



-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve Erbach
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 7:53 PM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: [dba-Tech] Almost dead hard disk

Dear Group,

I've dealt with a fair number of dying hard disks over the years, but
this one behaves differently.

It's a 20GB drive from a Gateway PC, vintage 2001 or so.  It's loaded
with Windows XP -- only 128 MB of RAM, though -- and it's pretty slow.
 But that isn't the problem.

The problem comes when it starts.  The POST will not appear on-screen
and the system hangs.  No drive activity.

I plugged it into another system as a slave drive on an add-on IDE
controller.  When I turn on the system I get just so far in the Windows
start up sequence and it hangs.  When I disconnect the drive,
everything's fine.

I booted up the second system with my copy of Gibson's Spin Rite 6 and
ran a level 4 routine on the drive.  Apparently the drive is segmented
into two pieces, one 20 GB, and the other maybe a few megabytes.  The 20
GB drive sailed right through Spin Rite's tests, but when testing began
on that second small partition, Spin Rite hung.  The screens in Spin
Rite still worked, I could flip back and forth between the different
screens; but I could not Esc out and terminate.  The Spin Rite menus
would co-operate with my keystrokes, but cancelling the session simply
had no effect.  I could not terminate Spin Rite's tests in mid-stream.

So, it looks like the second partition is hosed in some way and that
affects the hardware's ability to boot the PC normally.  Any of you have
any ideas?  I have not yet tried fdisk to erase that small partition.
That's my next step.

--
Regards,

Steve Erbach
Scientific Marketing
Neenah, WI
www.swerbach.com
Security Page: www.swerbach.com/security
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