Other Solutions 2
 

From: Michael Dal Lago



Maybe try the following;

· Boot from a bootable disk that every good IT tech has and carries. Now you should carry bootable Windows 98 disks with files like Fdisk, Format, Chkdsk, and other diagnostics files. Now if you have an NT system with NTFS, you can boot with OS2 bootable diskettes; with will read NTFS.

· If the BIOS still sees the HD but you cannot access it, your Master Boot Record may be defective. If this is so you may be able to recover it with the following command (Fdisk/mbr). This should recover the master boot record so you can read the drive.

· After that, you may be able to run DOS base backup software. Make sure that you realize long file names are not supported by DOS.

· If you wish to copy files to a different one, maybe you can use XCOPY32 to copy LFNs.



Of course, if the user was not backing up the system before this would be a good time to buy backup software since you will be in the store for the new HD. You may also use software like GHOST to make a image of the HD when it is running and install this image and ghost software to a bootable CD. When the system does crash, which will happen no matter what you do, remember to always plan for the worse. If you make the CD bootable, you can recover from a crash just by booting from the CD.



Another suggestion I would have is have an Application disk that contains all the applications and a different one for data. Keep a good daily backup of the data disk and maybe a backup of the application drive when major changes are performed.



From: John Dalnes



Already had this one this week. User deleted command.com and wouldn't boot. Tomorrow's presentation on the drive. Installed as secondary master in another machine and transferred data to the server. Reformatted and back online the next day.



From: John Callison



1. Run diagnostic, check post, check for error messages. These could indicate controller failure, etc.

2. Try hard drive as slave in another computer.

3. If the above does not get me access to the data, contact manufacturer and overnight drive to them. They may be able to fix the drive enough to get the data off of it or repair it without erasing the data.

4. Sell them a new hard drive and a tape back up or jaz drive, etc. It is best to max out the sales to them at this point as expensive lessons are usually the best learned.

5. If they call again with the same problem, no backups etc., give them the number of your competition.



From: Jim Burns



Check or swap the power supply to see if it's putting out the proper voltage. This can give a disk failure message during bootup.



From: Bailey, Vince



I would try fdisk /mbr to try and restore the master boot record to the drive.



From: William Perry



I would remove the hard drive, set it as a slave and install it in another computer as a slave. Copy data to another location. Run scan disk and defrag if drive will run at all. Reinstall in original computer and try it. If still fails, go to step 2.



2. I would remove the hard drive, set it as a slave, and install it in another computer as a slave. Copy data to another location. Reformat the drive, install a copy of startup files, then all other files if they do not contain errors (try opening them on the host computer).



3. If the above fails, install a new hard drive and salvage as much data and files as possible.



From: Robert Hird



Try the hard drive as a secondary IDE in another computer, (e.g.: your own, seeing as you are so nice). After booting, burn the info on CD, and run the disk utilities from your computer.



From: Bill E. Garity



I would try to use Fdisk /MBR—perhaps the master boot record is corrupted.



From: Sprynet



· If the drive 0 cannot be accessed at all, not even by the Setup program, it could be that the cables inside the machine are not properly connected, or cracked suddenly (heat always dries the plastic wire cover and sometimes it breaks).

· If I don't hear the hard disk noise when I turn on the machine, it can also be that the hard disk is not receiving any power. In this case I would also check the power cable and the connections.

· If all is well connected and receiving power, the I/O controller (onboard or on a separate card) may be damaged. I would try to connect the ribbon to the other existing port(s). I sometimes connect the hard drive to another computer too.

· If the I/O controller is fine, the hard disk is receiving power, then I boot from a diskette. I always keep DOS diskettes in all versions (5.0, 6.0, 6.22).

· Try to access C:\>

· If it doesn't work, I try the setup program again. Auto configure will not work? I use USER and type in the parameters written on the hard disk (of course I have to open the machine to find out). If it still doesn't wor–k—if when I enter C:\ the computer returns "Bad command ..." or "Invalid drive...,” or anything for that matter, I will try Norton utilities or another third-party hard disk utility.

· If it is a Western Digital, I will try EZDrive tools. If nothing works, I tell the client to be more serious about backing up next time.



From: Dan Nicolay



1. Complete hard drive failure (catastrophic hardware failure within drive) (clunking, etc.–)—send out to a lab if data is critical.

2. Can attempt to manually configure drive in bios–—open case and get heads, cylinders, etc., if bios won't auto detect.

If that fails…

3. Place drive in another system, attempt auto detect, etc. If the drive is detectable, but not bootable, solution will depend on whether it’s home system, whether it has network access, etc. By far the easiest solution is making a Ghost image (Symantec) and use Ghost Explorer to extract essential files. Gives you a backup and allows you to extract files that frequently aren't even accessible on a corrupt drive in a DOS or Windows session when attempting data recovery.



A Ghost image can either be sent to another drive in a system or using a boot disk or with network protocols (copied to a network drive). With the "ghost" image, you can check the drive and start over if the failure is not drive hardware related.



From: C L Gillies



1. Try going into setup cmos and correcting the hard drive settings (primary master) from Auto to User/LBA, whatever it was supposed to be; exit and save settings.

2. If this does not work, order Symantec's Ghost and make a clone.

Hope this works. Of course, you could try reinstalling the operating system after formatting but you'd lose all data without a backup.



From: Dave Adams

· The first thing I would do is ask the user what system he/she normally booted to.

· Then I would cold boot the PC, go into CMOS, and autodetect the hard drive.

· If it did not detect, I would open the unit, verify the connections and try again.

· If it still did not autodetect, I would try my spare test hard drive.

· If my spare worked, I would test the user's original hard drive in another computer.

· Assuming I got the hard drive autodetecting in the CMOS, I would then verify boot order in CMOS, usually A, then CD, then C.

· I would next cold boot to a virus scan diskette and verify the hard drive could be accessed and free of viruses. The diskette I use automatically removes any viruses detected.

· If I get to this point, I would again try to cold boot to the hard drive. Obviously, there would be some type of error message or symptom at this point to let me know better where I was in resolving this issue.

· If I received "missing operating system" on a Windows 95 machine, I would attempt to transfer the operating system from the appropriate media. If it was a Windows 98 machine, I would use a Windows 98 boot disk to boot to an A: prompt and then use the Scanreg command, view the log, and use an file that was dated long enough ago to hopefully restore the registry.

· If it was an NT machine, hopefully the user had a NT Emergency Boot Disk specific to that unit and I would use it and go the "Repair" route.

· After this, I would check with tech support, because I would not want to overlook something that could help me avoid reloading her original hard drive, as quite a few users never back up their data.

· If tech support came up with a solution, I would be sure to add it to my notebook so next time I could resolve the issue more quickly, efficiently, and professionally.



From: Brad Lewandowski

Well, since you said you were going to replace the drive, I see the options as these:



· Boot from a floppy with a full set of DOS utilities, double checking BIOS settings, fdisk, etc.…

· Use Interlnk and Intersvr and start a xfer

· Yank the drive out, change it to a slave, stick it in a functioning computer and xcopy/Ghost

· Maybe the MBR is bad, try copying one over with Sys command...

· God forbid you should send the drive to a 'Data Recovery' place...



From: P. Christensen



· Go to bios and ask the machine to automatically detect the hard drive. Sometimes it loses the hard drive due to a virus or faulty battery.

· If the machine finds the hard drive, go in and do a virus scan. If the battery made the bios lose the info, you shouldn't shut off the machine until the hard drive data files are backed up. Monkey B virus will alter the boot sector and make the hard drive disappear.

· Sometimes you have to be sure that in bios the machine will boot to A and then C and then make sure it has recognized the C drive in bios and then do a virus scan.



From: Murray Voight

· You need to be able to boot into the system.

· First get a generic boot disk that will allow this.

· If you’re able to boot up, then see if you can access the C drive through DOS.

· If you can access the C drive, then you should be able to access the files on the C drive.

· If you can't access the files, then try running a scandisk from the boot floppy.

· If you can't access the BIOS or the C drive through a boot disk, then the next step you need to do is shut down the computer and pull out the hard drive.

· Once you have the hard drive out you need to douse it in lighter fluid and immediately expose the non-functioning hard drive to an open flame.

· Although the last step is of great controversy, it will bring great satisfaction to know humans will always have the last word.



From: Howard J. Castello



Boot from floppy drive and then try running fdisk/mbr.



From: Andrzej Bednarz

The answer to the hard drive question is more complex than you may think, but the bottom line is that you really need to know how damaged is your hard drive or rather how much functionality is left in the hard drive.

· First, I would try to approach the problem by distinguishing if it is a hardware or software issue. If the problem is software-related, for example, the operating system is corrupted, the hard drive can be attached as a "slave" and the important data copied to the "master" bootable drive. Many times that approach can be used even for hardware-related problems, for example, when the hard drive is getting flaky, but it's not broken yet.

· It is a lot easier to prepare yourself for the broken hard drive, but to really motivate yourself for any preventive steps, you'd have to answer the question: would I be still OK if my hard drive crashes today? Also, how much time do I want to spent for a data and/or system recovery?

· Over years, I was developing many different methods of data recovery and backup, therefore the following is the fastest and probably the most reliable method of doing so. First of all, install the OS with all the associated programs and utilities including MS Office, Internet browsers, etc.

· When you test everything and you're sure that everything is the way you want, you can take an image of your hard drive by using Norton Ghost.

· For the files that you create from now on until next computer crash, create a folder called "data" and in that folder subdirectories for MS Office, PhotoShop, etc.

· From now on, all you have to do is to backup your "data" directory to the CD and copy the Ghost image to the second CD, and if you need to restore your system, it would take you anywhere from 5 to 20 min to have everything back where it was.

· If your hard drive snapshot image is bigger than 650 MB, choose option to compress the image during the process. If after compression the image is still bigger than 650 MB, you can split the image on as many chunks as you need, for example 20 chunks to backup 13-GB hard drive without compression.



From: Mike Fogarty



I have a really quick, no real science approach to this problem. Assuming that the drive will still spin, there is a quick, however with some risk involved, solution.



In past situations, I have successfully accessed a damaged drive by "replacing the drive.”



This method involves the EXACT SAME DRIVE as the one in question.



Step 1 With all power off, remove the hard drive in question and place it on the side where it can be easily accessed.

Step 2 Install the "NEW" drive (a drive of the same type, and manufacturer).

Step 3 Start the system up and get it to recognize the new drive. It is important to only start a command line session. Remember that we are only trying to copy some files here—this is an emergency maneuver. Also, the drive must be formatted the same as the drive we are questioning here.

Step 4 With the system RUNNING (be careful, this is the risky part I told you about, do it in this sequence), VERY QUICKLY detach the power umbilical from the running drive. Then detach the data ribbon cable from the running drive.

Step 5 VERY CAREFULLY reach for our drive in question and attach the data ribbon cable to it. Next, VERY QUICKLY place all four contacts simultaneously in contact with the drives power connection.

Step 6 Now enter at the keyboard some command—I use the DIR command. You should see the list of files for the questionable drive that you have HOT PLUGGED into this system. You should now be able to access the files needed to get you over the hump!



What has happened?



The system "thinks" it has the bootable drive you started it with and will allow you to use the device with the exception of booting with it, of course! This approach works quite well on drives that have sector one physically trashed.



From: Tron



My business is built on 100 percent On-Site Service. I carry most everything in my van that a 'shop' would have. I have a power inverter for AC power and two network-ready systems at my disposal for backing up customer data or to use as a loaner. Anything to get the customer back in business.



First: I boot from a floppy and run a program called "IDEID" that will identify the drive. I then compare these results with what is in the BIOS. I also will see if the BIOS can automatically and correctly identify the drive. If not, I use the user-defined fields.

Second: A.) I boot from a floppy and do a virus scan on drive C:. If C is there.

B.) If C is not ther–e—I carry a few older hard drives with various boot managers on them. I'll make my drive master and boot from it letting my boot manager load. This would allow me to see their drive if I used the right boot manager.

C.) If no boot manager is being used, and C is not present, I use Norton's "NDD/REBUILD" to recover the dos partitions. NOTE: ALWAYS MAKE THE UNDO DISK!

D.) If C is now seen, step B may need to be repeated.

Third: With C back, I'll identify the version of Dos/Win9X on the system—I carry boot files for all versions back to MS-DOS 3.3.

Fourth: Boot off of C if possible, "SYS C:" if it is not possible, Reboot!

Fifth: I use Drive Image to Dupe to an image on a 8.4 GB (remember the 8.4-GB limit!) drive that I carry with me. I let the customer put in a password so they feel secure in my not looking at their data. The above is predicated on the fact that the drive will spin up. If it doesn't, I sometimes have luck in placing the drive upside-down. Sometimes, I'll quickly spin my wrist when I turn the power on. The upside-down mostly worked on the ST1120A/ST3120A drives (Seagate 120M). I have no definitive answer as to why. The ST138R had a problem with what I call "STICTION.” This is my opinion, Seagate! I theorize that the armature would get stuck between the poles of the magnetic fields. In any case, those days are mostly gone.

This is usually the extent that I go to. After this, the customer must decide if the data on the drive is worth the cost of the recovery. I end by selling the customer a new drive and restoring their data from the image. This is usually on a second visit since I don't make it a habit of stocking drives for sale in my van.



From: Peter Becker



This has worked about 6-8 times over the last 5 years...

I have found the drive is not spinning...

If this is the problem, just remove it and rotate the drive quickly and immediately reverse direction.

You may have to repeat 2-3 times. It works for a while...

This appears to be more of a problem with old Laptops.



From: Bill Rankin



1. First some background info is needed:



A. Does the BIOS recognize/see the HD? (Correct drive settings? Disk Manager in use?)

B. What is the OS? (Win 95/NT/Linux/etc.?)

C. What is the partition type? (Fat16/32/NTFS/etc.?)



2. If A. is yes, and C. is Fat16/32, try a boot diskette (Win95/98). A command prompt, a couple of utilities, and a working parallel port will get your data off safely.



3. If A. is yes, and C. is NTFS; try a new hard drive as C:, load a new NT/NTFS system, and access the "dead" NTFS drive as the D:. Sometimes the hard drive's onboard controller can fail, yet be chained to another's board a là master/slave mode. Copy the data off ASAP and ditch the old drive to avoid the temptation to keep it as spare storage.



4. If A is no, try another computer—the BIOS/motherboard/CPU/memory/IO controller may be dead or malfunctioning. Troubleshoot the computer later when you have time.



5. If all else fails, attempt a drive recovery with Hard Drive Mechanic, or similar drive utility. If successful, copy the data off ASAP.



6. If the data is EXTREMELY valuable, and if you have a certified clean room/booth (or a professional service), transfer the disk platters into a exact duplicate working drive. This is a very costly option due to the requirements of a certified clean room/booth.



7. Last, but not least, PREACH TAPE BACKUPS!



LEGALESE: These techniques have been used by me to recover failed hard drives. Use of any of these techniques does not in any way bind me, nor any companies associated with me, liable for your attempts, actions, or losses as your circumstances may be dissimilar or conditions not covered by the aforesaid instructions. Be sure to get technical advise from a reliable source familiar with your situation.



From: Jon Torbert



Well, things are a little ambiguous here. Do we know that we are working on the Compaq Prolinea 4/66? Since it didn't specify, I will keep this somewhat general.

· The first step would be to boot off of a DOS startup disk and see if you can access drive C. If you can, then you at least know that you can manually save some crucial files on the machine. If the C drive is not accessible, then you need to go into the CMOS settings and see if the proper drive parameters are entered. If it is a newer machine, you can sometimes find a section in CMOS that will query the hard drive and determine the proper settings.

· If there is no such section, then you need to open up the computer and see if the drive settings, like heads, cylinders, sectors/track, etc, are listed on the drive.

· If none are found, get the drive make and model number and go to the company's Web site and get the parameters. Now go back into CMOS and enter the proper settings for your HD. Hopefully this will solve the problem since it was mentioned that the person had been in trying to input the setting themselves.

· If the drive still won't boot, and you are getting a "non system disk" error, I have found that sometimes you can copy the sys.com program onto your startup disk (I keep a generic boot disk around with various files like fdisk, format.com, sys.com, etc on it.) and at the A: prompt type sys c: which transfers the system files to the HD.

· If you are instead getting Invalid drive specification errors, you probably aren't able to access the HD at all, even at a DOS prompt. If this is the case, you probably need to try reviving the drive with a program like Norton Disk Doctor. You have probably lost partition info or your File Allocation Table (FAT.) These are things that Norton DD can sometimes fix. If none of these things works, it is probably a lost cause. Write it off to experience. Everyone gets this fatal wake up call every once in a while to remind them about backing up crucial data.



From: Ronald E Rietz



1.) Examine all connections inside and outside the PC to ensure they are secure. Remove and label the suspect drive. Make sure all fans are operating correctly. Obtain a replacement hard drive and install the operating system and Web browsing capabilities. Retain the box in which your replacement drive was shipped in case you need to ship your suspect drive away to a media recovery firm. Visit the Web site of the hard drive vendor and download the latest version of the vendor's diagnostic program as well as information regarding drive's geometry and jumper options. Determine the keyboard strokes to get into setup mode as well as setting up disk drives for auto detect, etc. Have an ample supply of blank formatted diskettes readily available. Make sure you have space available to copy any needed files from the suspect drive. Make a boot diskette. FDISK, FORMAT, EDIT, SCANDISK, CD-ROM drivers, and the hard drive vendors diagnostic programs should all be on the diskette.



2.) Install the suspect drive as a slave. Carefully handle the suspect drive as to not bump it around at all. It may be in a _very_ fragile state at this time. Close the PC’s case or otherwise ensure that there is positive air flow across the suspect drive.



3.) Take a break, think about how you will do the following carefully and as fast as possible to avoid possibly damaging the drive further.



4.) Turn on the monitor, insert your diskette from step one. Turn on the PC and go into setup. Determine whether or not the setup program auto-detects the suspect drive. If auto-detect is OK, the disk drive's controller is OK and proceed to the next step. If auto-detect is not OK, the hard drives controller card(s) are faulty. Try substituting a different controller card from another drive of the same type, if available. Assuming the controller is faulty and swapping the external controller card does not fix the trouble, you have a choice of sending the drive off to have the controller card repaired in a clean room or to abandon your data.



5.) If the auto-detection was OK, let the PC boot with your diskette. Use FDISK and see if it detects the suspect drive as a partition. If FDISK does not see the drive, you have an internal problem, quite possibly a damaged read/write head or an internal IC. You now have a choice of sending the drive off to be repaired in a clean room or abandoning your data.



6.) If FDISK detected the partition, you may have a damaged file structure. Boot the PC with your diskette and then do something simple like a DIR. You are not ready to even think about writing anything to the suspect drive at this time! If you can not do a DIR, you may be able to recover the drive with Norton or your own favorite program. Keep and label recovery diskettes (don't reuse them), you might need to backtrack.



7.) If you can do a DIR, try booting up your machine normally. It may be possible to copy directories and files across to your new drive. Give priority to the user's data such as mail files, data files, settings, and similar. You probably want to try copying the registry files as well.



8.) After you have copied the user’s data, try SCANDISK with the thorough option. Always save the files and always make recovery diskettes. The saved files may just need to be examined and renamed.



9.) If there are any bad spots on the suspect disk, try repairing them with the vendor's diagnostic tools.



10.) After you are satisfied you have recovered all of the data from the suspect drive, do a low level format with the vendor's diagnostic program. Do an FDISK and an operating system format and then reuse the drive as you wish. A second hard drive in a system makes a reasonable place to do quick backups as well as for swap files, temporary files, temporary internet files, and the like.



From: Tom Hayes



Recently we had a user with a Tecra 520 CDT lose his hard drive. It could have been a surge or some other problem but the electronics of the drive wouldn't work. We simply ordered a new identical drive and exchanged the electronics board connected to the drive, and we were able to access the drive to recover the 250-MB mail file the user had to have recovered.



From: Raymond S Cross



Not all hard drive problems are hard drive problems. I had a situation like this just recently. Computer booted with a 'fixed disk 0 failure'. Turns out the drive itself was okayI—it was a motherboard problem, possibly a bad IDE connector. I had recently put in a new motherboard, so I swapped the old one back in and the hard disk worked fine!



From: hhewel



I would have a spare fdisked and formatted hard drive running whatever O/S was needed, install it into the down computer as the new master drive, change the jumper on down drive to slave, reboot, run CMOS, setup auto hard drive detect, and setup drives, reboot, and retrieve info on the bad hard drive using new temp drive. Once new hard drive comes in, fdisk, format, install O/S and software.



From: Coy Thorp



First thing I would do is eliminate possible problem areas.

· I'd switch the drive to the secondary IDE chain and see if it auto configs. If not, I’d try it in another machine if that is possible (it is possible in my lab).

· Hopefully, I'd be able to get a drive letter and boot up to recover data.

· If neither of these work (and you're usually lucky if they do), then it's time to boot to a virus scan floppy and scan the boot sector for viruses.

· If there are none, then I'd move to a third-party utility, like NDD, and give that a whirl. If all of those fail, then I send it out to a data recovery center and drop 1,200 bucks of my company's money to recover data that the developer should have backed up in the first place.



From: Jeffery Aronson



After the routine checks of CMOS and drive settings etc., the most important step would be to clone the drive first as it is. I would recommend a program such as ghost, but there are others available. After completing the drive clone, work with the drive that you cloned and not the original drive. You can use a program called On The Wire or Drive Wizard. These programs will attempt to rebuild the various different aspects of the drive, FAT tables, Directory Structures, Files Structure etc. In most cases, you can at least get enough of the drive back to get to that important data, and never risk the original drive.



From:Tim Danner



· Make sure you put the drive type back to Auto in the CMOS. Then listen to hear if the drive is even spinning up. If the drive isn't spinning up, you can try the old tap technique to try and wake up the drive. If you are able to wake the drive, have the user backup important files immediately. Then replace.

· If the dive is spinning but it still isn't seen by the POST, then you need to try and locate a drive of the same make and model. Swapping the controllers on the two drives may allow you to access the data.

· If neither of these techniques help, then I usually tell the user to have a good cry, and then start over. But this time make sure you backup important files on a regular basis.



From: Steve Summers



I would suspect a bad disk controller first. Before I replaced it, though, if I was lucky enough to get the drive to come up, I would immediately run scan disk and scan the surface area. If everything checked out, I would replace the drive controller and see if the problem went away on the same problematic drive.



From: Chris



The way I would approach this is to use one of several disk-cloning programs such as Drive Copy or Norton Ghost. Both of these programs create boot disks that you can use to "rescue" a failing or error prone hard drive. You boot with this disk and then select either copying a partition to another partition (on another drive) or simply clone the entire hard drive. This process is very fast (depending on the machine) and very reliable. It copies all files and even preserved FAT setup and partitions when cloning a hard drive.



Another excellent tool to have in your arsenal is the Norton Boot Disks that will have the Dos versions of Norton scan disk and disk doctor as well as the Unerase and Unformat. These tools can restore lost files and correct and identify many more problems than just Microsoft scandisk even when using the 'scandisk /all' command.



Also, try replacing the IDE cable(s) to eliminate the possibility that there is a bad cable. If the error still happens, then the hard drive has probably failed. There is a remote chance that using MaxBlast or a similar hard drive utility from its manufacturer will at least identify and hopefully repair the problem. Otherwise...remember hindsight is always 20/20. Especially after you lose data...



From: Salman Siddiqui



There would be a couple of points to check before going into recovery mode:



1. Is LBA mode on or off? Toggling it and setting drive type to auto may help.

2. Was a Disk Manager type program in use? If it was, refreshing the MBR with the Disk Manager may do the trick.



If first has been tried and answer to the second question is no, I would use a low level disk editor to discover the bounds of the partitions, first and last cylinder. Remaining data, number of heads, and sectors per track can be worked out easily.



From: Thomas Bounds



Of the many different solutions that could solve this problem, I will start with the easiest.

· First, does the drive even power up? (Do you hear the platters spinning?) If not, check all connections. Otherwise, you have just acquired another paperweight (since you will have to resort to snail mail until you can get online again).

· If you do hear the platters spinning, I would resort to trying the simple options in BIOS such as LBA mode on or off and HDD Block mode. Change them to their opposite state and try to reboot now. There are aftermarket utilities that can detect the logical parameters of a drive such as DrivePro by Microhouse. This handy (old) tool has gotten me out of many jams in the 486 HDD world. It will tell you the parameters that the drive was set up for so that you may manually enter them into the HDD config. section of BIOS. This is also handy if you happen to be the (not so) proud owner of a drive with an overlay installed. If that is the case, you will probably want to use the overlay install disk to repair or replace the overlay.

· The problem could be related to the HDD controller. Try replacing it. I could rant for a long time on other solutions, but I don't have time to get into it that deep.



From: William Maxwell



Hard drive failures can result from a number of causes.

· First line of business is to talk with the client: Was the machine recently moved? Were any boards recently installed? A cable may have come loose during one of these operations. Check external causes, e.g. loose and/or oxidized connectors. Don't discard the possibility of little rodents–—I've seen flat cable gnawed through by these little critters.

· Don't forget to check the power cable to the drive–—no juice, no data.

· There's always a possibility that the on-board controller is shot, so to eliminate that factor I would remove the drive, jumper it to be drive 1 and install it in a known good machine.

· That done, I turn to a setup program called EZDrive by Micro House International. With it you can read and configure drive setup data, backup and restore track 0 or copy an entire partition.

· Summing up: First of all, be a good listener. Observe carefully, use good tools and be creative.

I got a call from a client who had been away for three weeks and had gotten back to find his machine wouldn't boot up. When I listened to his machine as it was turned on, I noticed that the drive motor wasn't spinning. Since we live in a very high humidity climate (the Amazon Rain Forest), I had an idea of what had happened. I politely asked him if he would get me a glass of water, as it was quite hot that day. As soon as he left the room I gave his drive a smart rap on the back with my knuckles. The motor immediately started spinning and by the time he came back with refreshments, Windows 95 was up and running. I emphasized the need to maintain regular backups and to purchase a good de-humidifier. I also suggested that next time he was away, he have his wife run the computer for a couple hours a day. He never pressed me as to how I got the machine running, and I thought it prudent not to offer that information.



From:Mark Householder



How about stiction? Remove the hard drive and give it a couple of firm twists while holding it in the palm of your hand. This will free the drive from the combination of static and friction that has caused the problem.

Re-install the physical drive and it should boot. Back-up the data and replace the drive ASAP.



From: 2K Designs



If you are going to replace the hard drive, then use ghost software and copy the hard drive you want to the other hard drive. Then once it is copied, try reinstalling windows. That will usually copy any files that could be causing the problem. If not, then reformat the hard drive, then reinstall Windows. If that doesn't cure it, then you will need to do a deltree, and erase Windows, reformat, then run windows again.

This always works for me..



From: Michael O'Quin



Listen for the disk to see if it is spinning. If not, take the drive out of the system and rap it on the side. Hook it back up and see if it spins. This is for an IDE drive.



From: James D. Patton Jr.



I'd add another HDD as master and the questionable drive as slave.

· Boot off the good drive and try accessing the bad one.

· If the bad drive is accessible then I'd install whatever O/S the user had previously on the bad drive. Once the O/S is installed, go to the bad drive to recover any data needed.

If the bad drive wasn't able to be seen as master, then I'd try once more to access the drive using SETUP to add the drive specs according the manufacturer.

· If this still doesn't work, then they are out of luck.

· They can pay a good chunk of change and have the data recovered from a company that deals with that sort of thing, and buy another HDD and start all over again.



P.S. I'd also put a password on the setup to make sure that any new drives won't be changed accidentally—ssince users never make mistakes. It's always the software or hardware to blame.



From: Dave Cason



Use IDEINFO or equiv. to check what the hard drive prams. were actually set to.

–P.S. Or if you're bored, swap motherboards. Heck, a few years ago for fun we swapped platters on Seagate ST-251 and it worked! (grin) If it's sticktion, grab the drive & crack it! There's lots of ways you can play!



From: Tony DeVos



First we must determine if this is a setup issue or a hard drive issue.

· Is the floppy drive properly recognized and working? Connect another hard drive to this system to verify the setup is okay.

· If the setup is working, then we must look at the hard drive itself.

· When powered up, does the drive spin?

· Does it just sit there and "click, click, click?” If it spins, it could be controller failure.

· Can you obtain another controller for this drive and swap it? Try it again.

· If the drive does not spin, it could be a symptom of "stiction.”

If it is "stiction,” you will most likely be able to assist the drive to spin up to allow it to boot and then backup the data. The way you help the drive to spin up is simple.

· Remove all mounting hardware that is securing the drive to the system.

· With the drive held in your hand horizontally with both power and ribbon cables attached, turn on the system and rotate the drive with a flick of your wrist.

· Keep the drive on the same horizontal plane as you flick your wrist twisting the drive as you would spin a top to make it spin. If the problem was stiction, the drive should now be spinning and you on your way to retrieving the data.



If the drive is just sitting there "clicking, clicking, clicking,” good luck! Please remember the only 100 percent way to keep your data safe is BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP. Use the tools provided in your operating system to scandisk regularly or obtain a disk utility program like Norton Utilities to take the best car of your hard drive possible. However, hard drives are sometimes like light bulbs—when you turn them on, turning off the power may mark the last time they will ever work!



From: Karl Andrzejewski



· Boot with a Windows 98 startup disk.

· Get the CD-ROM support.

· Try reinstalling the OS. If this fails, boot to DOS, bring along my ZIP dive, fire it up in DOS Guest mode.

· Copy any critical files to the ZIP, format the hard drive.

· Reinstall the OS backup system and boot files and let the user know they should keep their sausage fingers on the TV remote and off of the computer.



From: Brad Marin



First find the disc parameters and enter them into the bios. iI the disc is accessible at that point, I would copy the needed files to another drive. If the FAT is damaged I would run tiramisu and hope for the best.



From: Larry L. McNeese



I have in the past found that if you can find another hard drive of the same make and model, you can remove the circuit board from the dead hard drive and replace it with the one from the good hard drive. Many times the board is the problem, and it has saved the files and me several times. Of course, when you get the files off you need, scrape the bad drive and replace it with a new hard drive. I am taking in consideration that the tech doing this knows how to properly set up a drive—v ery important.



From: Jeff Wilson



After going through the usual hoops, checking the BIOS setting, and booting with a boot disk.



With the current pricing on hard drives, I don't fight with drives any more, I pull out my copy of Lost and Found by Power Quest and let it detect the drive.

· If it does, I will then install a drive equal to or greater than the old drive as master and set the old drive as slave.

· I reboot and rerun (LF) and let it backup the drive.

· If the drive is three years or less old, then the manufacturer will cover the warranty and we are all happy. This all assumes that the new master was seen by the BIOS. This works 95 percent of the time for me—game over, other than some diagnostics.

· If not, then I would reboot with the new drive by itself and see if it is detected.

· If not, I would install an IDE card and disable the onboard IDE, reboot and run (LF). This will work 99.9 percent of the time and allows me to back up all of the data on the old drive.



With the data backed up to the new drive and the old drive still as slave, it should now be able to boot the system. If it boots, I would check to see if the slave is visible. If it is, then double check to see if all the important data was backed up.



For grins, I would now try to boot the old drive from the IDE card. If it boots, then a possible motherboard problem and would take some more time.



From: Bruce D. Meyer



Simple,

· Move the defunct hard drive to secondary slave, or master or whatever is unused—but don't hook the IDE cable up yet.

· (Precaution) Install a new hard drive as primary master set it to 'ACTIVE.' With fdisk, format, install Windows, power down, hook IDE cable up to the defunct HD, reboot, set BIOS to show the drive, and then copy all the files (data files only please!) over from the defunct HD to the new one. Power down, remove HD, change bios to reflect no HD there, and you’re done.

· Alternatives are using ARCO RAID IDE controllers to back the data up from one drive (Primary/defunct) to Mirror/NEW)) and then remove Arco raid (Duplidisk) and install new Hard drive as primary master.

· Also, you can use EZ Drive, GHOST, or one of several other software methods to copy or mirror the hard drive. If you have bad sectors on the original, you'll quite likely have bad data on the new drive where the bad sectors were on the old.

· If the old drive won't spin up, or can't be recognized in BIOS whatsoever, power down and up (Power completely off each time) relentlessly until is it detected (BIOS set to AUTO for that drive). You will possibly get lucky once in 30 boots.

· Once up, do your work, because it may be the last time it comes on. Also, try letting the computer cool down for several hours, remove the drive to get it out of a warm case, and let it cool down. Then try it cold.

· (Thermal deficiency may cause it to fail when hot.) In the same vein, if it is cool, then let it just sit there with power on it for thirty minutes, then just reboot for about 30 times (Don't power down.) This may work too.

Of course, let's do first things last.

· Replace your IDE cable, remove the other IDE cable from the motherboard. I have seen CD-ROMs fail that rendered sound cards, network cards, and OS’s brain-dead.

· Simply removing the CD ROM from the IDE cable was all it took to prove this point, and fix the computer. (Hey! HD is fineI—it's the CD that is tying up the IDE bus and IRQ/DMA controller!) No data loss.

I probably missed some of the better tricks, but generally, that should solve what is solvable.



From: Joel Yalung



· Check to see if the primary hard drive ribbon is correctly attached or connected to the Motherboard and Hard drive.

· Make sure it's not loose.

· Or check the ribbon itself—make sure it still good.

· This usually solves the "invalid drive specification" and "BIOS Auto HD detection not finding the HD."



From: Troy Schlueter



Do the normal ritual of making sure power and IDE cables are tight, and changing the IDE cable.

Is the drive spinning? If not, then:

· Remove the drive and connect it back up outside the case.

· Power up the box and give the drive a quick twist to see if it will spin up.

· Try the drive on a known good working machine as a slave, if you can get it up in the cmos.

· If you still have no response, find a functioning drive that is identical (same make/model) and swap the circuit boards.

This usually does the trick, unless the original drive has a physical error. (i.e. bad motor or platters)



Last resort—send out to a data recovery business.



From: stan



Depends on why it's dead. On older drives, it was quite common for the heads to stick to the platter. It would not have the torque to start, so it couldn't work.

· Best method in that case was to put a long extension on the power cable, leave the data line off ,and with the drive between your palms, quickly rotate the drive and at the same time power on. Try both clockwise and counter clockwise. One should work if it's a "stiction" issue.

· If the drive spins and has a problem with the logic board, it's sometimes possible to swap the electronics without opening up the disk cavity, but that's a last resort.



From: Michael Wagoner



Tough question and in some aspects it depends on what operating system the machine was running.

Obvious checks are:

· Make sure all the cables are properly and firmly attached.

· You might want to swap out the ribbon cable and/or change it to the secondary controller connection.

· Pull the power plug off it and plug in a different plug. Can you hear the hard drive spin up?

· If you (were smart enough and) brought along a different hard drive, does the machine recognize THAT hard drive? Does it spin it up? Does it start it?

Assuming all of the above is intact and you've narrowed the problem down to that ONE particular hard drive as having the problem (and that ONE hard drive DOES spin up), I'll tackle it from the perspective that the machine was running either Win95 or Win98 (the steps for both are similar).

· I would bring a startup disk from a Win98 machine to start with (make sure you have the correct startup disk type FAT 16 for machines fdisked that way FAT 32 for machines fdisked that way If the 'owner doesn't know which it was, chances are high it was FAT 16, especially on older machines).

· The reason for this is simple—it allows you to start up the machine with CD-ROM support (this is assuming that the machine has a CD-ROM). At bootup, I would access the CMOS settings and set the machine to try to recognize the hard drive automatically—once again, the next steps would depend on whether the CMOS was able to identify the hard drive or not.

· Assuming it did recognize the hard drive, I would boot the machine (without the boot disk) and check what error messages I got (if any).

· If it did not recognize the hard drive, I would try to manually input the hard drive settings (some CMOS's allow this, others make it a bit harder to do).

· Now try to boot without the boot disk.



Assuming that one of the above methods at least got the hard drive recognized, but at boot up there is some other error regarding the hard drive, I'd stick in the boot disk and boot with it.

Next question is at this point can/does the machine "see" the hard drive. I've had both cases, some where it did, some where it didn't. If it sees the hard drive, can I see my information? If yes, can I access the information? Usually one of those two questions is a no.



If you can access the hard drive (the system sees the hard drive, sees your directories) but not access the information (when you try to enter into a directory or call up a file you get an error message) chances are you have a messed up FAT table.

· You can try to fdisk /mbr from your boot disk, it will re-write the FAT table.

· Now pull out the boot up disk and try to reboot again. Any luck? If so you may be in business, if not you're hosed.



I've tried, with mixed success, using Powerquest's Lost and Found program to try to retrieve data from a hard drive. It's hit and miss enough that it will depend on budget and how "important" the information is before I try to recover it. We just had a hard drive crash that we sent out to have the information retrieved, at $125 an hour it was expensive to recover.



Those are my solutions, for what they are worth.



From: richarr



This has happened here several times.

· I install the new hard drive, make it a bootable partition, and install the operating system.

· Then place the old drive on the secondary disk position and copy the contents to the new drive.

· Usually into a folder called OLD DRIVE. This provides a directory tree map for where to place the files.

· Then after reinstalling all the software, original files can be placed back into the proper place on the new drive.

Very rarely does this procedure not work for me.



From: KC Freels



· Try putting the drive in another machine. It may come up there.

· Put it in as a second drive and boot from a working drive.

· Try and access it then. Failing that, try using a program like Ghost and image the drive onto another one. If this works, you're really lucky.

· If the motor is stuck, or the drive isn't spinning right, open the top of the drive (it's dead anyway) and spin the platters using the spindle.

· Sometimes this will get the drive spinning and usable one last time.

· It will never work again though, so this is a last resort.



From: David Chambers



This is a common situation. And, it has turned out to be a simple resolution (most of the time). I'm the Network Manager at the San Diego Blood Bank. The non-profit status of our organization makes purchasing new, up-to-date equipment quite a challenge. Consequently, the largest percentage of my 220 desktops are legacy 486/66 boxes. Their relative age brings about hard-drive failures on a monthly basis.



I've been able to extract the data from these drives using a boot disk, and one of two backup methods.



1. Use a portable backup tape drive that runs from the parallel port (Trakker).



2. Use DOS Client and a boot floppy to get the box on the LAN then map a drive with NET USE and XCOPY the important files to the LAN.



Of course, the boot floppy method works for about 75 percent of the failures. If the boot floppy fails, I try using FDISK/mbr to rebuild the Master Boot Record. This is successful 5-10 percent of the time. Since the user mentioned in the quiz had messed around with the BIOS, it's possible the settings are wrong and even more probable that the jumper on the drive is misconfigured because, although the user "didn't do anything," that new CD-ROM they installed is on the same controller as the hard drive. The disappointing part of making a hard drive spin back to life exists in the 10-15 percent that are actual physical failures that will require depot level repair to extract any data. A very expensive process.



From: Ron Masters



Hard Drive Dies.

Oh, you've got to love these kinds of situations, don't you?



Well, this may sound strange, but it's worked for me before. (That is, if booting off a floppy still won't gain you access...and there are strange sounds coming from the drive...)



1. Shut down the power and remove the case cover to gain access to the drive. Remove the drive from the case, but leave it connected to power and ribbon cable. (If the ribbon connector cable isn't long enough, attach one that is.)



2. Now, hold the drive in your hands and kick on the power (use an assistant if you'd like). As soon as the power comes on, twist the hard drive quick and fast in your hands. (Kind of like steering a car hard right). This sudden "torqueing" is sometimes enough to "break" a drive free, allowing it to spin...usually for one last time. (Have a Zip or second drive already ready to gain access to the files.)



3. A slight variation on this (once again with long power and ribbon cables) is to set the drive down on a flat surface (non-conductive please!) so that it can be "spun" while flat.



Why does this work? Well, in this situation, my guess is that the lubrication of the drive has failed, and the torque overcomes the initial spin-up of the drive.



From: co



· I would open the box and ensure that all of the connections are still are where they are supposed to be, including the controller card, if it has one.

· I would ask the client what operating system they were using, so that I cold make a startup from another box.

· I would try to copy the sys files to the hard drive by booting to the floppy.

· If that doesn't work, I would boot to one of the hard disk utilities available for the brand of hard drive in the client’s box (maxblast, ontrack, etc., also norton disk doctor), and get to a dos prompt, to copy the needed files.

· As a last resort, I would consult the Internet.



From: Jim Davison



The symptoms you describe would lead me to believe that the drive lost power or died. Maybe the Molex power connector worked loose.



I would use the following steps even considering that you state the user had "tried" to manually enter the settings in setup and also tried auto. The user may not know what they are doing.



1. Try IDE Auto Detect to see if the bios can even see the drive.

If yes, then I would use that setting and everything should be OK.

If yes and the drive still does not boot, I would use fdisk/mbr in case the Master boot record was destroyed.

If no then I would go to step 2.



2. Open the box and check all power and data cables. I have seen Molex type power connectors lose a connection intermittently I have also seen one case where the data cable came loose when the computer was moved.

If cables were the problem, then you should be okay now. If you still have a problem go to step 3.



3. Remove the drive and plug it into another computer and see if the other computer can detect the drive.

If yes then the problem is a cable, motherboard, etc. on the computer and needs to be replaced. If the thing still is not working, then it is most likely a defective drive and you will need to decide how badly you need the data on the drive. If you need the data then I would send the drive to a data recovery lab that can extract the data from a dead drive and save the data to a tape, CD, HD etc. This can be expensive but may be worth it.



From: ppotts



Boot the PC from a DOS Boot Disk. Make sure that the boot disk has the following files on it:



FDISK.EXE

SYS.COM



1. Boot the computer and see if you can see the drive. If you can, then COMMAND.COM may be damaged or missing or the boot files may be corrupt. Run SYS C: to make the hard drive again bootable.



2. If you still can't see the hard drive then, run the following command, FDISK /MBR. The FDISK utility updates the master boot record only if one does not exist. Even repartitioning a hard drive with FDISK does not necessarily rewrite this information. However, this switch allows you to write the master boot record to the hard drive without damaging the existing partition table information. You should not use this command if you are using special partition software (not partitioned with FDISK), if you have a dual-boot disk (such as NT and Windows 95/98) or if you have more than 4 partitions on your drive.



From:Gary Moon



You have to troubleshoot from the hardware up:

1. Swap the IDE cable to eliminate that as a cause. Also, check any jumper settings, and remove any other drives from that cable.

2. Set the drive type back to Auto. If drive ID isn't taking place, then you can't communicate with the drive anyway.

3. If you can't hear the platters spin up or the heads doing their "positioning dance,” and it's a few years old, it might have a "sticktion" problem caused by the lubricant on the platters sticking to the heads. With the PC off, give the hard drive a couple of sharp taps on the side with the handle of a screwdriver! Then power it up again.

4. If all the hardware seems to be functional, you'll have to see if you can get at the data.

5. Many Compaq PCs have an 8-MB system partition that launches the system diagnostics when you press F10 (or another combination) on boot up. See if you can access this partition. If so, your hard drive is not completely lost.

6. Depending on the manufacturer and model, the drive might require a special boot-time driver to access the full capacity of the drive. Two examples are Ontrack Disk Manager, or Maxtor's EZ-Drive. This driver usually resides in the root directory of the system drive or the MBR, and if it is lost, the system won't be able to correctly see the drive partitions. On some later 486s and early Pentiums, even though they can read the drive information into the BIOS, they still cannot properly translate the CHS information. This can lead you to believe that the computer can use the full capacity of the drive, while in fact, it cannot. Try re-installing a translation driver using original software, if the drive came with it. This should not require any formatting of the drive or loss of information.

7. Run FDISK and view the partition information. If FDISK cannot access the drive, then the hardware is still messed up, and you need to back up a couple of steps until that is corrected.

8. Try switching the drive into a new machine you KNOW will support its capacity natively.

9. If none of these steps works, and you are certain the drives hardware is functional, then get a data recovery software such as Tiramisu, or as a last resort, try fdisk/mbr.



From: John Bragdon



I have tried only a couple of steps on my own:



1. If you are a "computer person" you would have brought a bootable floppy with you. Boot off the floppy and hopefully you can read the c: drive then.

2. Opening up the box and slapping the hard drive can revive the hard drive if the servomotor is "frozen."

3. I have turned the data cable around and powered on, and after about two seconds, turned the box off and then put the cable on correctly. Powered on the box and the system found the hard drive.

4. I have used the utility Speed Stor in the passed to tell the CMOS about the hard drive if the CMOS could not be read from the system. Of course you have to know the head and sector size.



From: Lou Schweichler



This procedure assumes you do not hear any "grinding noises" or other evidence of a physical damage, i.e. worn-out bearings, dragging read heads, etc. If you do, then the HDD is "toast" and you might as well offer your customer your condolences as the HDD has just headed to the big computer in the sky and it's cheaper these days to replace the HDD then to repair it.



First, Check the CMOS settings and verify they agree with those preprinted on the HDrive's Label, If not preprinted on the label, either use a program like EZ-Drive to obtain the correct values or remove the hard drive and connect it to a known newer motherboard and use that board’s CMOS setup utility to detect the proper values. Try rebooting to the C:\ prompt on the new board. If successful, reinstall the hard drive to the original board. Then ensure the CMOS settings on the original board agree. Adjust as necessary. Try rebooting. If the your lucky your finished. If not try the second step.



Second, if the first step didn't solve the problem, then the FAT Table may be corrupted. Use a utility like EZ-Drive, which usually can be downloaded from any of the Major HDrive OEM's Web site, to switch to a backup version of the FAT (file allocation table). Usually there is a backup of the FAT on the HDD, but switching to it requires the use of a HDD utility like EZ-Drive. Follow the instructions for the Advance Options to switch FATs, then reboot. If reboot to the C:\ prompt is successful, AND you can access your data files, Run SCANDISK from the DOS prompt to verify the integrity of the FAT. Then do a cursory search of the HDD for any documents you may have recently created. If you can get a good DIR listing of them, you're done—smoke' em if you got em!. If not, then try third step.



Third, this step will result in the total and absolute loss of all data on the hard drive and should only be used as a last resort. You can use the DOS commands, "FDISK, FORMAT C: /S", to reformat the HDD and reinstall the operating system. Better yet, using a HDD utility like EZ-Drive accomplishes this in about one tenth the time. Make sure you have a bootable floppy disk that includes any special device drivers and programs to access your peripheral equipment (like the CD-ROM) so you can complete the OS installation. If your computer system came with a restoration disk, you could reinstall the COMPLETE OPERATING SYSTEM AND ALL SOFTWARE. Alternatively, once the HDD has been reformatted and the HDD set up, you should now be able to reinstall the complete operating system, (WIN31, WIN95, WIN98, MAC, LINUX etc.) and all your application software from the original distribution CDs or Disks.



From: Brett Edmonson



· First I would make sure all cables are connected and make sure it is getting power.

· Then I would check the setting in the BIOS, and make sure AUTO doesn’t work. If not, I would confirm the settings of the hard drive to the settings in the BIOS.

· Then I would see if FDISK sees the hard drive from a Win98 boot disk (which has FDISK on it).

· Then I would proceed to use the utility Hard Drive Mechanic, if it does not see it, IT IS DEAD!