What happened to my hard drive?

Greetings to all you techies 'out there',

I'm wondering can anyone give me some clues as to what happened to this Seagate 40 Gb hard drive I was messing around with the other day.

I was using Clonezilla to try to get a newly cloned XP system to boot on a disk that previously had contained a few different partitions, one of which had Ubuntu on it. I've used Clonezilla for this before and it's worked flawlessly - but this time, on the reboot where the OS is supposed to be initialized (or something), instead, rather than offer the option to bypass the CD and boot from the hdd, it would go back to starting up the install option of the XP CD;

The XP partition was the only one recognized by the XP CD, so I used Part Ed Magic to delete the non-NTFS partitions, thinking that would fix it, but instead the hdd acts like a brick now, and worse than a brick, since whichever IDE channel it's plugged into, it prevents that channel from detecting itself and any other device on that channel (jumpers set to cable select), causing big time delay in boot while the BIOS trys and fails to detect said items.

Since Bios can't detect the drive I can't try recloning or even wiping the drive so I can start over with it - any one have any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mikel

Reply to
mike
Loading thread data ...

40GB would make it a rather old drive. My guess(tm) is about 2002. Check the label. Depending on operating conditions, that's probably beyond the useful life of the drive. Incidentally, all 40GB Seagate drives are not the same type. You might find it useful if you would divulge the actual model number.

That means that the BIOS didn't recognize the hard disk drive. That could be anything from a trashed boot record, mangled partition table, mutilated BIOS settings, goofy 3rd party boot manager, or a failed drive. However, if it prevents anything else from working on the IDE cable, then you have the IDE ribbon cable plugged in backwards.

I assume you tried to power it on/off, checked the cabling, and offered sacrifice to the hard disk gods. If so, it's dead.

Yep. The drive failed. I've had it happen to me while working on the drive. No guess on exactly what is failing. Is it going kerlunk, kerclunk, kerclunk, at about 1 second intervals on bootup?

Try Seatools and see if it finds anything:

It probably won't if the BIOS can't find it, but it's still possible.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Yeah, it is kind of old, the S.M.A.R.T. info says it's beyond it's useful life, and has been that way since I got it about 5 years ago - it came from machine that got 'burnt up' when the neutral went bad at my neighbor's house. Used it in my main machine until I got some newer stuff about a year ago, and up until it turned into a brick I've never had any problem with it. Since I started using the newer, bigger capacity stuff, the 40Gb drive has just been kinda for experiments and testing out new systems/component groups ( model # is ST340810A ).

Or XP setup didn't recognize it, because it did show up correctly and quickly on the startup screen as the system booted

I suspect I deleted a partition that I shouldn't have, didn't know that was possible...

No, that's not it, double checked, tried setting as master and slave and CS , cables are type that can only be plugged in one way. BIOS just hangs there trying to detect , doing nothing, drive makes no funny noises, or even normal ones but you can tell by feeling that it's spinning .

Oh, yeah, multiple iterations.

Well darn, I was afraid of that, but was just hoping maybe there's a program out there that lets a drive be manipulated even if the BIOS had not detected it.

No, no funny noises - my guess is I deleted a partition I shouldn't have (without doing something else also), but you could be right and it just happened to finally fail.

I tried a couple different versions of Seatools, I guess when the bios doesn't see it, other programs can't either. Thanks Jeff

Mike

Reply to
mike

The BIOS should recognize a drive regardless of the state of the drives partitioning, formatting etc. The BIOS via int13 says hello to the drive's electronics and it reports back its CHS, LBA etc.. If this doesn't occur it is a problem with the drive electronics. I've verified this by taking two identical Seagate 160 GB drives. One that failed to be seen in BIOS and one that was making some weird noises. Both were out of satellite DVRs. Swapped the drive electronics and the drive that could not be seen by BIOS now showed up and functioned properly for a year after. Just an FYI.

--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse
Reply to
Meat Plow

What kills drives is turning them on and off repeatedly. I have machines where the drive is running 24x7, and they last many years. I have an ancient Conner 1GB 1060S drive running in my SCO Unix 3.2v4.2 server since about 1985 without difficulties.

I have a pile of those. They tend to have a short lifetime. I have to dive into the paperwork to check the typical failure mode.

OK. The BIOS recognizes the drive, but Windoze does not. There's a chance that the drive can be revived if you wipe it clean.

Try one of the numerous disk wipe type of programs. (what I use)

Stuff in the Windoze XP CD and boot it. It should ask to partition and format the disk. After it's done, it will install XP. Much easier with a clean HD.

Make up your mind please. When you go into the CMOS setup, does the drive show up and is it correctly identified as an ST340810A drive? If so, the BIOS sees it. If not, it's dead.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Wed, 18 May 2011 07:03:45 -0700 (PDT), mike put finger to keyboard and composed:

It could be that the drive has a weak head or bad media.

There is a reserved System Area (SA) on the platters which stores the runtime (ATA) firmware, defect lists, SMART data, etc. When the drive starts up, it executes a POST and some minor bootstrap code on the PCB, and then proceeds to retrieve the firmware from the SA. If the SA is unreadable, then the drive won't come ready.

You could try a DOS based diagnostic such as MHDD. This can access the drive directly, without going though BIOS:

formatting link

Be sure to use the ENABLEPRIMARY switch if the drive is the master on the primary IDE channel: http://66.14.166.45/whitepapers/compforensics/danalysis/MHDD%20Documentation.pdf http://66.14.166.45/whitepapers/compforensics/danalysis/MHDD%20Manual.pdf

Otherwise you could access the drive via its serial terminal interface using a program such as SeDiv. Let me know if you need more details.

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
Reply to
Franc Zabkar

That reminds me, I have an identical drive lying around here somewhere, so at least can swap the electronics and see what happens - thanks.

Reply to
mike

In 85 that would be a humongous sized drive. Sounds like a record in the making, if not already...

Ok, that was approximately the situation before I deleted the non-NTFS partitions - after deleting those partitions it just sits there when the machine is turned on, it spins up but there are no sounds of the heads seeking anything, and the bios finally times out and says there is nothing on the IDE channel it's plugged into - it just sits there, brick-like...

Ah, there is still hope, then, I'll see if those programs will touch it like it is.

Sorry for the confusion - what I mean is that after the drive became brick-like, I tried out Seatools 1.09 and 3.04 with the drive plugged in but undetected, and neither version was able to see the drive.

No, not any more

So far it's RIP ded.

Thanks again, Mike

Reply to
mike

Interesting details, thanks...

5.10.02-MHDD

I did try MHDD, when I hit F2 to get the hdd info the result was "drive not ready" - but I'll go back in there and look into this ENABLEPRIMARY switch you mention - I'll have to read some more of the docs.

sis/MHDD%20Manual...

Ok, I'll look into SeDiv, but I have a feeling that communicating via a serial terminal interface is gonna be above my pay grade, I'll let you know :).

Thanks for the pointers and links Frank, Mike

Reply to
mike

On Thu, 19 May 2011 03:18:23 -0700 (PDT), mike put finger to keyboard and composed:

That could mean that the drive is stuck in the BSY state.

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
Reply to
Franc Zabkar

Hmm, that may be so, at least at the top of the MHDD screen the BSY indicator is lit

Thanks, Mike

Reply to
mike

http://66.14.166.45/whitepapers/compforensics/danalysis/MHDD%20Documentation.pdf

My suggestion is that you take a close look at the pins where the IDE cable plugs in and you'll probably find at least one pin is bent and isn't plugging into the IDE cable.

Reply to
Mysterious Traveler

OK, next chance I get I'll do that, though I think its unlikely that that's the problem (knock on wood :)

Reply to
mike

  1. Try it with just the power applied and no IDE cable connected. Can you now hear the heads seeking? The IDE interface on the motherboard might be fried.
  2. You might not be able to hear the heads seeking (actually self-calibrating) on power on if the machines fans are noisy. I use a stethoscope.

Seatools should detect a drive that's not formatted, but does show up in the BIOS. However, if the drive does NOT appear in the BIOS, it's dead.

MeatPlow suggested juggling PCB's on the drive. That might be worth the effort as drives that don't appear in the BIOS are usually PCB failures, not HDA failures.

Seagate and Western Dismal have made my life interesting. Prior to about 2005, WD drives had horrible premature failures and Seagate were surviving much longer than WD. After about 2008, the situation was reversed, with Seagate drives failing miserably, and WD doing much better. That's also the current situation. With only two players left in the commodity retail drive biz, it's becoming rather scarey. All I can hope for is that the SSD drive makers take over quickly. Hopefully, they'll last longer than 3-5 years but too soon to tell.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Good grief, reading that have noted Seagate have recently lept into bed with Samsung (trouble free drives in my TiVo), and WD has just gobbled up Hitachi GST. Billion dollar plus deals.

--
Adrian C
Reply to
Adrian C

That's a great suggestion. Any odd noises, seeking, RPM going up and down indicates electronics fail or in a few cases a fail to read the engineering data. I was under the assumption and don't ask why, newer drives have engineering data written to NVRAM on the drive's board.

--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse
Reply to
Meat Plow

Greetings to all you techies 'out there',

I'm wondering can anyone give me some clues as to what happened to this Seagate 40 Gb hard drive I was messing around with the other day.

I was using Clonezilla to try to get a newly cloned XP system to boot on a disk that previously had contained a few different partitions, one of which had Ubuntu on it. I've used Clonezilla for this before and it's worked flawlessly - but this time, on the reboot where the OS is supposed to be initialized (or something), instead, rather than offer the option to bypass the CD and boot from the hdd, it would go back to starting up the install option of the XP CD;

The XP partition was the only one recognized by the XP CD, so I used Part Ed Magic to delete the non-NTFS partitions, thinking that would fix it, but instead the hdd acts like a brick now, and worse than a brick, since whichever IDE channel it's plugged into, it prevents that channel from detecting itself and any other device on that channel (jumpers set to cable select), causing big time delay in boot while the BIOS trys and fails to detect said items.

Since Bios can't detect the drive I can't try recloning or even wiping the drive so I can start over with it - any one have any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mikel

It's a 40 Gb drive, very old technology. Just through it out and buy a new drive. You'll probably get a 500 Gb for $30 some dollars.

Shaun

Reply to
Shaun

On Thu, 19 May 2011 22:10:27 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow put finger to keyboard and composed:

Head characteristics vary significantly. Some have better frequency response than others, or they may have variations in the separation between the read and write elements. To take advantage of the better performing heads, drive manufacturers implement VBPI (Variable Bits Per Inch) and VTPI (Variable Tracks Per Inch). The "adaptive" data for each head need to be stored in NVRAM so that the drive's MCU can find the SA (System Area).

This article should explain it:

formatting link

You can see the adaptive data for a Seagate 7200.12 here:

formatting link

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
Reply to
Franc Zabkar

The relevant issue, though, is that the drive in question was growing bad sectors; even a 'good electronics' drive might NOT pass power-on self test and will tell the control software NOTHING useful, when the wear of years stops it from reliably reading the magnetic info.

Reply to
whit3rd

That kind of defeats the reason for having a repair REPAIR newsgroup.

--
It's easy to think outside the box, when you have a cutting torch.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.