Dead HDD

[greenstick]

Hey guys

I built a PC for a friend a few months ago. Today he called to say he was unable to shut down and had switched it off at the mains and now when he turns it on, there is nothing.

After checking power leads I replaced the PSU and it started 1st time. great.

Then, nothing happened and on the screen was the message Primary Master hard disk fail. I rebooted a few times and swapped the disk to another PC but still nothing.

I am assuming from this that the HDD is a gonner. I really need to know if there is anything else I can do to try and get this drive working again.

If not, is this kind of fault covered under a manufacturers warranty?

The drive is a 60Gb Maxtor Diamond Max.

All suggestions appreciated.

Greenstick

[Bovon]

Reset the BIOS to default and reboot..go into setup and auto detect the hard drive again. It may be as simple as that...but, be aware that the drive could have also died when the power was cut.. sounds like that may have happened?..in all of my years of fiddling with these things, I have never lost anything other than corrupting the OS by hitting the power switch.

[cracked]

if what bovon said doesnt work, you could go to maxtors website. im sure they have a downloadable diagnostic software and you could use that to fix the drive, or at least confirm that it is dead.

whether it is under warranty or not depends on how old it is and whether or not it came as part of a computer package (dell, gateway, etc) or if it was bought separatly. im not very familiar with maxtor but i know that western digitals site has a thing where you can enter the serial number of the drive and find out whether it is under warranty or not. im sure maxtor prolly has a similar function. check it out and if it IS dead and IS under warranty then you can do an RMA(return merchandise authorization) and they will send you a new drive. instructions for this should be on maxtors website.

drew

[thekingofpain]

IF it is the hdd and under a year old yer golden---do the diagnostic from Maxtor as cracked suggests, you will know the condition of the drive instantly---if it fails it will prompt you for the rma---follow the rma info making no mistakes for best results...

[Dj-Icer]

how (could) your hdd got broken? has it been knocked on something..?

i also had those kinda problem. but i do it in a different way. i didnt do it simply, but i tried to adjust the power cable and try switching it with another cable. or checked it in ms-dos, scan disk to see if theres any errors.

[DoctorReno]

Then there is that old trick of putting the HD in a plastic bag and into your freezer for an hour or so. Theoretically, if the spindle is bound up the contracting of the metals "may" free it up. Many have gotten a drive to run long enough doing this to salvage important data before the drive binds again.

[someone16]

I've been wondering about the Primary Master hard disk fail thing. His harddrive works on his old computer but not on his new.
His old harddrive works with the new mobo, however...
He bought the WD 80gb 8 mb cache HDD, I was wondering if there's a solution for it. He's reluctant to send it back in to WD

[greenstick]

Guys

thanks for your suggestions. As the drive fails in both my friends machine (the one which was turned off) and my own PC, could this still be a BIOS issue?

I assume there was a power surge, something certianly blew the PSU as was presumabley enough to also blow the HDD.

I'll get onto the Maxtor website tonight and see what I can do.

Cheers