HD as slave preventing machine booting

[iainshaw]

(Technical spec of PC is at the end of this message

Evenin' all,

Was using PC when everything 'froze', CTRL-ALT-DEL wouldn't unlock, and didn't resolve itself when left alone for a while. Had to pull plug to power down. Rebooted to get an error (forgot what it was exactly and I forgot to write it down - but I think it was an ATAPI.SYS error). Machine eventually rebooted and allowed me to recover Word document I was working on. Turned off for the night - and since then has been unable to boot from the HD. Boot process starts, winXP loading graphic appears, screen goes black and then get BSOD and UNOMUNTABLE BOOT DEVICE error. Now I have extensively searched this forum and many others and have sought out as much advice on the U.B.D. error and all the suggested fixes have not worked eg use the recovery console - FDISK /R gives no joy, FIXBOOT and FIXMBR make no difference. Placing the HD in a freezer to free a stuck arm does not resolve the problem.

I have used Norton Utils and it reports there are NO problems with the disk.

However I cannot boot the machine at all when this HD is in the machine. I have a spare HD which has XP Home installed, if I use that as the master and the sick drive as the slave (with all possible jumper settings tried) then the boot process starts, it gets past the XP loading screen and then the screen goes black and nothing happens after that - ever, I even left it in this state overnight and still the screen remained black, with periodic disk activity from both disks. (In fact the first time I did this I could see the sick drive, but it was just before I went to work and ASSumed that when I returned from work it would do the same thing so turned the machine off - how silly do I feel now !!!)

When the sick disk is in the machine on its own then you can hear it spinning up and it doesn't make any 'bad' noises.

I have tried inserting a win98 HD and having the sick XP disc as the slave, and this time it will boot to completion, but the sick drive is viewed as a CD drive and cannot be read, even Norton does not see it as a drive. If I go to the command prompt and use FDISK and change the active partition, it allows me to see the sick drive, but only as a 10Gb HD, and I can do nothing to it, FDISK /MBR makes no difference.

I have tried to use a LINUX installation and try and mount the HD, but LINUX (Xandros) will not even see the sick drive.

If I use the XP recovery disk or an install disk, it sees the 80Gb HD but when I try to install back to the disk, or delete the partition it will not let me do it and gives an error.

So I am really running out of ideas, the data on the HD is not overly critical (ie I am not spending serious money on taking it to a data recovery agent) but there is about 100Mb worth of digital camera pics which weren't included on my last backup which I really would like back.

I feel that if I could get XP to boot up with the sick disk as a slave, like happened once before, I would be able to retrieve the data, so really my question is, does anyone know why the boot is hanging even if the the sick disk is a slave (or even replaces the DVD or CDR/W) and how I can over come this. I have changed as many BIOS settings as possible that I think would make sense and still to no avail.

Really am starting to get desparate now, any help gratefully received, and if you need any more clarification on what I have done or extensive hard ware specs then I can provide them.

Iain

P.S. When I have a new disk fully loaded with XP on, and the sick disk is nowhere near the machine EVERYTHING works fine with the machine, it is only the HDs presence that creates problems.


Spec:
Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo 600 1900MHz
Windows XP Home edition
Seagate 80Gb HD (with 80 wire cable)
256K RDRAM
factory fitted DVD and CDR/W
Intel MOBO and chipset (exact spec not known as I can't seem to locate the correct info)

[dunbar]

Welcome to TechIMO, iainshaw!

How old is the drive, when installed into the system, any recent events such as electric power issues, mechanical shocks; and do you use antivirus software?

Might the drive have lost its master/slave jumper since it was initially configured?

Alas, Norton is not the utility it once was, a version once missed a whole raft of drive issues on my system.

[meese]

Go to the Seagate website and download the drive utility program. Run a diagnostic on the drive and see if it comes up with any errors.

[iainshaw]

Thanks for the welcome dunbar,

The drive is 2002 (has a Segate date code of 02203). I use Norton Antivirus 2003 which has autoupdat switched on. As far as I know there were no obvious adverse events.

> Might the drive have lost its master/slave jumper since it was initially configured?

not sure quite what you mean here, but if you mean the little jumper in the back that is in place or do you mean an actual fault with the jumper connecter hardwired onto the disk ?

And you are right about NU, although I do usually reach for it first, I think it is struggling to keep up with the pace of hardware changes.

Iain

[mlee97]

When I test a drive like that, I put it on the secondary IDE port all by itself. Then use diagnostic proggies on it. Because there can be cabling/setting/logic problems that interfer with the boot on the primary IDE channel, I'd suggest you try it that way.

[iainshaw]

meese,

I ran the seagate diagnostics disk and it told me I had a damaged disk which would need replacing (interestingly the generic tools passed the disk on every test!!).

So I took the FD out and restarted, and guess what, the bloody disk booted up - albeit with crap settings - 4bit colour 640x480 screen etc - so I just started to feed it CDRs to try and back up as much stuff as possible, but it died again mid way through the third disk.

This was the first time today the disk had gone in the machine, and it was cold, when it broke again it was VERY warm, so i wonder if I try to reboot it in a day or 2 whether I can get even more data off it.

Most importantly the first thing I got off was all the irreplacable data like photos etc.

So now I am a happier man than I was 3 hours ago

Iain

[iainshaw]

Well this should be the final update here - woke up this morning, put the disk in as a slave and the entire system booted up - but told me that it couldn't recognise the disk, but it had found it as new hardware. Rebooted the system, the disk is now recognised and I can pull ALL the data off the disk. Only thing that I can think off is that there was something physically stuck on the disk and that my repeated taking it in and out of the machine has dislodged whatever the problem was. I will still replace the disk as I don't think that I could ever trust it again.

Thanks for everyones help - I don't know how we did it, but we did it.

Iain

[meese]

Glad to hear you got your data . Yea I would definitely replace that disk. Don't take any chances!

[dunbar]

Originally posted by iainshaw
> Might the drive have lost its master/slave jumper since it was initially configured?

not sure quite what you mean here, but if you mean the little jumper in the back that is in place or do you mean an actual fault with the jumper connecter hardwired onto the disk ?

I've seen some of those relocatable jumpers for Master/Slave/CableSelect which were so loose that I could tap the case of the drive with my fingers and the jumper would drop out of the drive; electrically this can be intermittant and might be confusing the controller, mechanically this is defective.
Also (I did not research which type of jumpers your drive had), some drives (Quantum is a noteworthy example) have the Master/Slave/CableSelect jumper on the circuit board of the disk drive. Which means the jumper is pointing straight downwards when the drive is mounted horizontally. The hard disk spins, the PC may be relocated, fans can vibrate, whatever, over the years, things vibrate, and it is possible ('though not extremely likely) for the jumper to drop off due to these vibrations.

Glad to hear of the success in getting the data.