Unknown hard disk error - Great

[Bill in SD, CA]

I was sitting here posting when I heard the HDD on my 98/2K system sitting next to me spin up and stop, spin up and stop, then spin up.

LED light stays on.

Knew something was up so I went over and moved the mouse.

A couple of seconds later an error box pops up and say "unknown hard disk error."

Reset nothing. Hard power off, back on, and no drives are detected so of course I get the "No OS found" error.

Go into BIOS and both of my drives don't show.

HDD LED stay on all the time.

Did the drive just crap out while it wasn't doing anything?



Bill

[Atomic Rooster]

Sounds like it passed away. My condolances.

You could try using the diagnostic utilites available from the HDD manufacturer to determine if it is indeed dead.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Never having had this happen before my question is:

If the primary master dies does that mean my slave will disapear in the BIOS also?

Bill

if the slave is on the same ide as the master, just switch the jumper to single drive mode

[Atomic Rooster]

Yup Bill, they'll do that sometimes if they're on the same IDE cable.

[Peter M]

Since the controller in the Master drive also controls the Slave's drive, that'll be a Yes. If you revert the Slave drive to standalone operation, it'll be back though.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Well this is weird.

Just powered on after about 15 minutes and drives were detected.

Just did an online diagnostic - passed on both drives.

Doing a floppy diagnostic now.

However even though both drives were detected at boot the floppy diagnostic isn't showing the slave drive as an option to test.

:confused.

Anyone got a quick link to install the Recovery Console as a boot option so I can run chkdsk from boot.?

Kind of frazzled right now.

Crap, drive just died again.

Bill

[Bill in SD, CA]

Just went to WD's site and submitted the serial # for a RMA and it was approved.

I'll leave the system off until the drive arrives and hopefully it'll boot so I can check for stuff to take off.

Most of my data is on the slave.

Bill

[Bill in SD, CA]

Got lucky and was able to pull my accounting data off the drive along with the ghost image of my other machine.

Bill

[Incognitotj]

Just curious... Do you have broadband, and if so are you behind a firewall? Might have been an attempt to hack your system.

Incog