bios doesn't recognize hard drive

[ckronengold]

howdy-

computer was running fine. then just wouldn't boot up. I think the hard drive may have over heated since it was pretty hot here in nyc last weekend and I had the computer on, downloading, for about 3 days straight. nothing else changed.

now, when i turn on, i get only F1 to or F2 to enter set up. F1 doesn't do anything.

In the BIOS, there is no device recognized on the primary IDE. There are CD and DVD on the secondary.

Was on the phone with Dell (its an 8200, p4 1.7 640mb RDRAM). Tried switching the IDE cables. tried the full diagonostic. no results for the hard drive.

does that mean its just dead?

i have a 2nd hard drive that was 120gb and just storage, no OS installed on it. Can in install XP without losing that data? Just to get back up and running? Then try and recover the first hard drive?

the drive that crashed is a WD 2000JB 200gb. It was partitioned into 50 and 150 gb, with XP and the programs installed on the C: partition and storage on the 2nd partition.

Any suggestions? Dell said i had to go out and buy a new drive, but i'm worried about everything that I had on the 2nd partition. Any way to recover that???

I guess the first thing I need to do is somehow get the computer to even boot up.

TIps for the newbie????

thanks
ck

 

[micker377]

Go into bios setup and make a note of the settings. Shut down the computer and reset the bios jumper. See if the bios recognizes the hard drive now. If that doesn't work, look at the hard drive itself and you will see a listing with the correct "set up" parameters. Set up the hard drive as "manual", put in the numbers listed, and see if the computer will recognize it now. As a last resort, try another hard drive and see if the bios will recognize under "automatic". If not, the motherboard bios may be defective.

 

[wolluf]

If machine is recognising the second 120GB drive and not the 200, then good chance its dead (have you another machine you could try it in?)

You can install XP on the second drive - just select the existing partition to install into when prompted (leave existing file system intact, if prompted)

 

[ckronengold]

wolluf- the bios is recognizing the master 200 gb western digital. the maxtor 120gb slave drive failed.

micker-i could have the jumpers messed up at this point after switching so many things around. but it seemed like no matter how the jumpers were set, adding the 2nd drive back in made it crash.

but the whole system was working before the crash. this isn't a new set up. it had been working for months.

probably should have mentioned that i'm hearing a "tick tock" clicking sound from the drive. the maxtor 120gb slave drive.

i thought i was using cable select, because my mobo supports it. i may have switched IDE cables in this whole process too. Do all IDE cables support cable select?? or do I need to go to a master/slave setting with an older, but unused IDE cable?

thanks

 

[micker377]

What happens if you put just the "tick-tock" drive in as master? (disconnect the other one and set your IDE detect as "auto")? "Tick-tock" is a sign of the hard drive head "seeking". This can be caused by bad drive, or wrong drive parsmeters. Also try just putting the said drive in as slave (won't boot, but BIOS should see it OK.) If it can be seen by BIOS, it's either a bad data cable or IDE port on the motherboard.

 

[wolluf]

ck - you've confused me!

Post one

'the drive that crashed is a WD 2000JB 200gb'

'have a 2nd hard drive that was 120gb and just storage, no OS installed on it. Can in install XP without losing that data'

Post two

'the bios is recognizing the master 200 gb western digital. the maxtor 120gb slave drive failed'

The obvious thing to do is try each drive (as I don't know which is meant to be working) on its own as master. Just make sure the jumpers are set correctly for that - 40 or 80 pin IDE cables (preferably 80 with those drives, but 40 will work). You should be able to tell from this whether (either) drive is defunct or not - and move forward from there. The fact the system was working is irrevelant if a drive has in fact crashed

 

[ckronengold]

wolluf-

thanks for your help and attention. at first, I had thought the main hard drive, with the OS on it had crashed. Thats what the Dell Doofus told me.

now i've got it basically figured out. The Western Digital with C: and D: partition (only C: is bootable) seems to be fine.

The slave drive (maxtor 120gb tick-tocker) also with no OS on it, is causing the problems. when it is out of my system, i seem to be ok. when I put it back into the system, the BIOS wont see anything and I have to go back and boot with my Norton Ghost floppys.

if I try to run the maxtor as the master, I dont think anything would happen, since there is no OS on it. It wouldn't boot, right?

sorry for the confusion. too many hours in front of this damn thing.
thanks so much for your help, too.

 

[wolluf]

If you run maxtor as master (on its own) it won't boot - but the bios will or will not detect it - and if it is detected, you can run either a maxtor diagnostic or just something like a win98 boot floppy to see if there's anything there (even if its ntfs - fdisk should see the partition as non-dos if its viable). If no sign of life, reasonably assume its dead.

 

[ckronengold]

Bios not seeing anything. I tried it as a slave and also on the secondary IDE channel instead of the CD roms.
no life.
Bios wouldn't see it.

It is NTFS. Is that bad? Should I use FAT32 next time?

 

[wolluf]

Ntfs not bad - in fact much better IMO - but win98 can't read it - so you can't read it from win98 boot floppy without additional software (though fdisk can see the partition as non-dos).

Unfortunately, it seems to be academic with this disk - it does appear to be dead.