Hard drive failure!

sjt269

sjt269

sjt269

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11 Dec 2004
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My brother turned his PC on tonight and was confronted with the message 'Hard drive read error', and the PC failed to book. He duly came and asked me for advice, and I cannot fix it...


It's a Western Digital 160Gb SATA drive, and it's been in the PC for almost two years (PC bought preassambled from OcUk - its out of warranty by now though, I think, so no fear about pulling it to pieces if I have to). There hasn't been any unusual clicking or whining, so he says, and there was no indication it was going to fail. I don't have any idea what to do; I'm not too good with hard drives.

So far, I've tried changing the power connector to the drive, and I've tried resetting the CMOS. And I've spent a lot of time in various BIOS menus, looking for things that might be helpful, and fiddling with things that weren't. The PC hangs during POST, and doesn't get anywhere near loading Windows. The BIOS knows the drive is supposed to be there (it doesn't show in the BIOS, funnily enough, is this normal for a SATA drive? My own PC is IDE only), and knows what type of drive it is, but can't seem to read from it. Also, in an nVidia RAID control menu somewhere, the drive shows up as being in RAID mode...but it's on its own? Is that also normal for a SATA drive?


Anyway, I'm out of ideas, and my gut feeling is that the drive is dead, but I have no idea why it should suddenly stop working like that. Any suggestions much appreciated. I'm going to try the PC tomorrow with my IDE hard drive, just to check that it's definitely the hard drive, and not some hitherto unsuspected motherboard fault. Any other info I can supply that might be helpful, just let me know, and I'll try to find out.


Thanks
tTz




PS: first time I've been back on these boards in about six months. I know this means nothing to anybody, but after looking on the OcUk homepage and seeing a San Diego 3700 for £35, I'm feeling seriously out of touch with the computing world... :eek:
 
Unfortuantely drives do just die without warning occasionally. I know it's not a lot of help but I can sympathise with your situation, it's happened to me plenty of times.

Everything suggests a dead disk. Not showing in the BIOS is usually a dead giveaway although it might be a red herring in this case - some SATA implementations use an add in controller which is separate from the main BIOS although you mention nVidia RAID so the drive should appear in the main BIOS.
 
Any idea where about in the BIOS it would appear? I can't find any lists of SATA devices anywhere tbh. The fact that the model of hard drive shows up in the nVidia menu led me to think it might still be communicating with the motherboard, but everything else makes the situation look grim. :(



I hate losing hard drives. I lost one of mine last year, the day after a really important series of essays was handed in. I was lucky that time...24 hours earlier, and I'd have been screwed. :rolleyes:
 
On most current boards the SATA drives will show on the main page of the BIOS as the third/fourth IDE master, underneath the traditional first and second IDE channels. That is, however, board dependant. What board is in your brother's PC?
 
rpstewart said:
On most current boards the SATA drives will show on the main page of the BIOS as the third/fourth IDE master, underneath the traditional first and second IDE channels. That is, however, board dependant. What board is in your brother's PC?
Click to expand...


It's a Gigbyte GA-K8NF-9.
 
I don't recall seeing anything mentioning IDE channel 2...there was a channel 0 and a 1, but neither of them were registered as having anything connected to them other than a CDRW drive (to 0 Master), and doing auto-find scan things found nothing. I've got the PC here with me now, so I'm going to have a bit of a play with it.


:edit:

Right, well, nothing is showing in the BIOS, and an attempt at a Windows reinstall tells me the drive isn't readable/valid. To top it all off, now it's making wierd clicking noises. Rest in peace, 160Gb Western Digital... :(


Looks like it'll be a trip to a computer shop for me tonight. I get the impression this PC is wanted back ASAP, so I'll get some kind of cheap SATA drive (I assume a SATA II hard drive would work with this mobo? All the ones on OcUk seem to be listed as SATA II) and get the PC set up as soon as I can. I seem to have spent an awful lot of time in the last year reinstalling Windows on dead/damaged drives. Hmm. :o


:edit2:

Found the answer to my SATA II question in the sticky. ;)


:yet another edit:

Ooh, it appears this drive is still under warranty. Apparently it's eligible for replacement. :)
 
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