[dba-Tech] Almost dead hard disk

Erwin,

I probably didn't explain myself well enough in my original post. 
When I said that I mounted the drive as a slave on a secondary IDE
controller -- an extra one mounted in a slot, not the secondary on the
 motherboard -- and that the system only got so far with Windows
before fading out, I meant that the C: drive of the system in question
was the one running Windows and that it didn't make it to the login
screen.

If the drive won't boot on its "home" system, I'm curious as to how it
could boot as the primary drive on the secondary controller.

Thanks for replying to my question.  You've given me an idea or two.

Steve Erbach

On 1/24/06, Erwin Craps - IT Helps <Erwin.Craps at ithelps.be> wrote:
> 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