Hard drive problems...
<div class="IPBDescription">Help meeeeeee!</div>OK, I realize that this isn't a forum for computer troubles, but many of your are more knowledgable than I, so I shall attempt to find help here. Here's hoping I can get an answer...
Basically, my CD-burner crapped out on me. No real warning, just locked up the computer, and when I reboot, my BIOS doesn't see it. Hmmm. Well, my hard drive is fairly full, and I still have some stuff I was planning on backing up. So I take out my hard drive and go to a friends house. I set the hard drive jumper to "slave," plug it in, and turn the computer on. The BIOS screen comes up, and then nothing but a black screen with a blinking underscore in the upper-left hand corner. Well, I say to myself, maybe my friend's computer is just screwy. If only I were so lucky. I unplug my drive, and their computer boots up just fine. Scratch that wish. So I plug my drive in again, and take a look in the BIOS, and yes, the drive shows up just fine. After the 'puter POSTs, though, I get nothing. Except that underscore, of course. Well, this is looking really very much not good, so I go home, plug my hard drive in, and settle myself to wait until I replace my CD-burner.
Imagine my chagrin when the same thing happens to my on my own computer. BIOS loads, computer POSTs, and then a whole lot of nothing. Except a blinking underscore. I unplug the hard drive and boot up, and I get the standard "Operating System Not Found" message. I search and search, but was unable to find my boot disk. Well, this is really not good. I can't even play Solitaire! I sit around in a malaise for a few days, reading what books I could scrounge up, when I decide to try backing up my drive again. I go over to my friend's house, and the same thing happens. Well, next I try unplugging their CD-ROM and plugging my drive into its own IDE plug. Still nothing but that now annoying underscore. Well, I can try one more thing. I unplug my drive, boot up the computer, and plug my hard drive into its own IDE cable while the computer is on. Boom! Windows recognizes the drive and it appears. Well, that's nice, I say. I can at least back up some of my writings (including a seven-page NS story). I try rebooting. Still that same underscore.
Well, I suppose that sums my problem. I haven't checked the entire drive, but some of my writings seem to be intact. Does anyone here have any idea what might be causing this, and/or any way I can get my computer back without having to wipe out the entire drive?
Again, I know this isn't exactly the place for it, but I can hope that someone here might be able to help.
-Ryan!
What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.
-- Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Basically, my CD-burner crapped out on me. No real warning, just locked up the computer, and when I reboot, my BIOS doesn't see it. Hmmm. Well, my hard drive is fairly full, and I still have some stuff I was planning on backing up. So I take out my hard drive and go to a friends house. I set the hard drive jumper to "slave," plug it in, and turn the computer on. The BIOS screen comes up, and then nothing but a black screen with a blinking underscore in the upper-left hand corner. Well, I say to myself, maybe my friend's computer is just screwy. If only I were so lucky. I unplug my drive, and their computer boots up just fine. Scratch that wish. So I plug my drive in again, and take a look in the BIOS, and yes, the drive shows up just fine. After the 'puter POSTs, though, I get nothing. Except that underscore, of course. Well, this is looking really very much not good, so I go home, plug my hard drive in, and settle myself to wait until I replace my CD-burner.
Imagine my chagrin when the same thing happens to my on my own computer. BIOS loads, computer POSTs, and then a whole lot of nothing. Except a blinking underscore. I unplug the hard drive and boot up, and I get the standard "Operating System Not Found" message. I search and search, but was unable to find my boot disk. Well, this is really not good. I can't even play Solitaire! I sit around in a malaise for a few days, reading what books I could scrounge up, when I decide to try backing up my drive again. I go over to my friend's house, and the same thing happens. Well, next I try unplugging their CD-ROM and plugging my drive into its own IDE plug. Still nothing but that now annoying underscore. Well, I can try one more thing. I unplug my drive, boot up the computer, and plug my hard drive into its own IDE cable while the computer is on. Boom! Windows recognizes the drive and it appears. Well, that's nice, I say. I can at least back up some of my writings (including a seven-page NS story). I try rebooting. Still that same underscore.
Well, I suppose that sums my problem. I haven't checked the entire drive, but some of my writings seem to be intact. Does anyone here have any idea what might be causing this, and/or any way I can get my computer back without having to wipe out the entire drive?
Again, I know this isn't exactly the place for it, but I can hope that someone here might be able to help.
-Ryan!
What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.
-- Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Comments
If this is fine try booting from a botofloppy. Get to the commandline and try CDing to C: (I assume it's your main HD dead).
IF this fails, Abort, then type scandisk C: (you'll have to check that syntax with a scandisk/? first.
This should give a diagnostic of what is wrong.
If that fails, well seek out somewhere that promises HD recovery.
also, you said you put the drive on the same ide cable that the cdrom was using. dont do this. the hard drives should only work on the primary ide channel. at least, last i checked.
check the manufacturers website. they will post known issues of their drives. i had an old model ibm drive that constantly had really strange problems and every time i went on their site, there was information on what the problem was, and most of the time it had a solution to the issue.
Again, thanks for the advice offered to date. Please, folks, wish me luck on a smooth reformat and reinstall. I have yet for one to go smoothly. But that shall change, silicon gods willing.
-Ryan!
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
-- Edith Sitwell
A word of advice: Fujitsu drives have a good selling point: they are extremely cheap. But they also have a downside: they are extremely cheaply made.
-Ryan!
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
-- George Bernard Shaw
First my HD started failing to find files needed for boot up, it would lock up on a scandisk and most the disk was found bad.
However I tried swapping the disk in from my other PC. That dind't seem to do anything (my computer now seems to hang at "verifying DMI pool data" if I change the drive configuration at all) yet when I put it back in my old PC that drive then failed to boot. <!--emo&:(--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':('><!--endemo-->
I just reformatted my HD, and it's fine now, but the other PC is my parents and they don't want to loose their data, yet I can't get their drive to do anything any more.
Could it be I have a dodgy power supply or something that keeps knackering these drives?