OT: Nasty HD problems

Download a live GPARTED disk and see if that can see 'em. Linux seems to be able to see and even mount drives that are turned off in the bios.

The Hirens boot CD runs windows XP live from a CD and has LOTS of utilities.

Can you be more specific about the drives and what problems you're seeing?

I buy old Tivo's and rip out the hard drives. They have a couple of issues.

1) they don't start until you address them. If the bios is looking for a drive, it won't see it, cause it's turned off. There are programs that patch the drive firmware to fix that. Sometimes, there's even a jumper on the drive.

There are also issues when the drive firmware can't be recognized. There's a live boot CD called hdat2 that can solve some of those problems.

Game console drives are designed to prevent updating them with cheap drives. The game sites have lots of info on that stuff.

Depends on what you have.

I have hard drives that causes my BIOS to freeze,and are not accessible to older computers where the BIOS sees the drive.

Is there a (nasty?) way to alter a computer so that there is a very simple-minded BIOS (say on the order of a Compaq Presario 5185 AMD K6-2) so then an extensive HD test suite could be used? The BIOS of an ASUS P2L-B P2-180 is too sophisticated and hangs; a

286 only "knows" CHS and maybe cannot support LBA even with fancy software.

Next, where can one get a fairly extensive test suite and what OS would one be forced to use?

Try a different power supply?

-- john

It happens that Robert Baer formulated :

Get an adapter to plug into the drive then the adapter goes into the USB port. Now you have a USB drive. The adapter I have takes SATA, IDE and that little laptop drive connector whatever that is called. Works a charm for me. Got it from Microcenter but others carry same.

boot the Os first and then connect the drive

how good are you at programming in assembler?

and then what?

that depends on the problem

--
?? 100% natural

On a sunny day (Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:00:41 -0800) it happened Robert Baer wrote in :

I do not remember the exact details, but older bioses do not support above some size harddisks.

Time for a new PC? Those are very cheap now, as sales of PCs is down.

I mean K6, come on!

Absolutely NO comments, notices, HD specs, or even ranDUMB chatter from them no matter what is or is not plugged into them. If a good drive is plugged in,then new drive(s) are seen. So,not useful for checking bad drives.

• Even tho i have that, GPARTED cannot be used, as the BIOS hangs.

• Implying that there are programs that can query / list drive firmware? Where,names, etc??

Here is my test report:

Hard drives tested

serial # model mfg #1 WCAMD5989602 WD800BB-56JKC0 JUN 2006 #2 WMAMD9843319 WD800BB-56JKC0 JAN 2009 #3 WCAMDA481549 WD800BB-63JKC0 SEP 2007 #4 WCAV37819534 WD800AAJB-00J3KC0 FEB 2010

Computers used (MSD reports all as 486DX) PCDOS used with UIDE driver which reports PATA, SATA, CD, and DVD drives

• Compaq Presario 5185 AMD K6-2 380/95Mhz BIOS only reports drive size if HD changed BIOS UIDE model FDISK, partitions #1 - sees drive reported not found #2 - sees drive not found not found #3 - sees drive reported sees ALL 4 partitions #4 - sees drive reported sees NTFS

ASUS P2L-B 180MhZ BIOS UIDE model FDISK, partitions #1 - HANGS #2 - NO report not found not found #3 - HANGS #4 - HANGS

ASUS A7N266-VM/AA 1600MhZ BIOS UIDE model FDISK, partitions #1 - reported reported not found #2 - BLANK IS NOT UDMA not found #3 - reported reported sees ALL 4 (boots and runs) #4 - reported reported sees NTFS (no boot:not active)

ASUS M2N-MX SE PLUS 2700MhZ BIOS UIDE model FDISK, partitions #1 - HANGS #2 - HANGS #3 - not tested #4 - not tested

Nonsequiter..one HD always works, another always cause BIOS to hang. See my report.

OK, those look like tivo drives. There are a bunch of issues, and I didn't keep records. So, from memory... Tivo had custom configuration and maybe custom firmware. Tivo drives don't all behave the same way. 40GB drives are different from the 80's. And even among 80GB drives, I recall different symptoms.

Your first problem is getting the computer to boot. My test machine is a dell 4600 P4 machine. I ran an experiment for you.

Drive is a WD800BB-55JKC0 out of a Tivo. I've already fixed this one, but the test result may be relevant. The Bios setup sees the drive as an 80GB drive on Secondary Master. I disabled the drive in the bios. Restart Now, it shows up as non-existent in the bios.

Booted Gparted Live Cd. Gparted recognizes the drive and the NTFS partition. I'm assuming that it would let me edit the partition table, but I didn't want to risk trashing the contents.

If it won't boot the CD, not much you can do.

Tivo drives won't spin up unless they're addressed. If the bios or the OS is waiting for a spinning drive...catch 22. Disabling the drive in the bios should solve this problem and let the system boot. But you can't do nothin' in windows. Linux lets you work on a drive that's disabled in the bios.

Some drives have a jumper for this. Try that first.

The live CD called HDAT2 as mentioned in my first post is what you want. RTFM, but the note written on my CD is "hdat2 /W fixes tivo spinup." Beware that linux commands are case sensitive and I can't tell from my scribbling. There are a lot of other options on that CD, but I never tried 'em.

Once you have it spinning, you have to initialize it. Tivo doesn't use the same boot process as your computer. My experience has been that windows format won't let you initialize the drive if it thinks it's already initialized, even if it can't use it.

At this point, I just messed with it until it worked. There's lots of discussion on the web. Some recommend using dd to write zeros over the first few sectors. Once zeroed, the windows GUI partitioning system will complain that the drive is not initialized and ask if you want it done. No idea how to do it from a command prompt. Gparted may let you do it. There may have been something in HDAT2. My memory is very fuzzy on all this.

ONce you get it properly initialized, GPARTED will let you partition/format it.

I have one Tivo drive that I never got working in windows. But it runs linux just fine. ?????

About USB. USB/IDE converters have a number of different chip sets. Some won't give you direct access to the hard drive, some will. I've never figgered out how to tell before buying one and trying it.

The Bytec BT-300 will let you do stuff like SMART over USB, But still may not let you change internal registers with HDAT2.

Are we having fun yet?

Have them; not useful to determine WTF on a bad drive.

• Say what? is not that dang-erous?

• done a bit now and then.. So maybe i can write some low-level check progs, BUT.. Does not help when the computer BIOS hangs foist.

• READ my problem description "have hard drives that causes my BIOS to freeze".

>

There is USB (which you have dismissed)

SATA supports hotplug (in the spec atleast), recent linux kernels claim SATA hotplug support, if needed use an adaptor:

Some BIOSs let you configure drive interfaces as "ignore this" or similar.

Unplug the power to the dodgy drive while booting, (that should be fairly low risk) or use a separate PSU for the drive

But I figured if you were making this much fuss over a non-functional drive there must be something on it worth the small risk of destroying the motherboard or controller card.

I was suggesting you may have to customise the BIOS, it's all flash these days so you don't need any special hardware, probably not real easy without source though.

If the drive is not detected sensibly the controller card (on the drive) is possibly kaput.

--
?? 100% natural 

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OK; the drives are not "from" anything - they are "new" refurbished drives from two different resellers (one is Newegg that refused to honor their replacement policy). Will try the Parted trick. Have tried a number of HD utilities: MHDD and Victoria boot from their floppy; neither sees the HD; SeaTools for DOS (boots from a CD) also noes not see the HD; DLGdiag does nothing but waste space and time; HDDscan.EXE does not see the drive, WinDFT cannot install as a procedure point is missing; and WinDLG does not see the drive.

Your comment about Parted gives me hope.

• I did NOT "dismiss" USB, i stated observed fact that these USB SATA/PATA adapters fail to give any information about attached drives.

• I gots PATA..

• Risk is ZERO, these are "new" refurbished drives. There is absolutely no logical reason to use a different supply for the drive - especially in light of the fact that these are WD 80G drives the same vintage as other WORKING WD 80 GB drives.

• Check; source not obtainable even with a million dollar bribe to BIOS vendors.

hence the adaptor. On the other hand I've never had a functional HDD that was coreectly wired stop a machine from booting, I've had over-size drives be ignored or mis-identified, but that didn't stop booting off a media that was recognised.

seeing as it's PATA perhaps you've got a master/slave/cable-select conflict of some sort?

new, refurbished, non-functional ?

I meant risk of electroistatic or other damage during hot-plugging the drive

My thought was to do this so you can boot with the drive invisible to the bios.

--
?? 100% natural 

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Nice claim, since "hot-plugging" is a recent thing. And NO, old mainframe and mini-computer gear does not count.

• What adapter? I am using the MB IDE interface directly. Default WD jumpering is CableSelect; the BIOS hang happens exactly the same whether i jumper as CS or as Master (HD installed a Primary Master).

• Absolutely NO conflict; see above.

• Did i not say _refurbished_? From Newegg that refused to honor their own replacement "warrantee".

• Have never hot-plugged a HD since 1980.

bios.

Lemme see...the IBM PC/XT came out in 1980 and there were a LOT of CP/M computers in use, some with 8 inch (and 14 inch) hard drives (HexSPensive!!) and i heard a tale of someone trying connector swapping on a running HD... Somewhen around 1983 5.25 MFM Tandon 5Mbyte HDs came out and the controller board could handle two; cabling simpler that most of the CP/M stuff. So if that is "recent"...