H.D. error

[meloadri]

I have a Dell optiplex GX270 that when booting gets: The primary IDE master hard drive self monitoring system has reported that a patameter exceeded its normal operating range. Dell recommends that you backup your data regularly. A parameter out of range may or may not indicate a potential hard drive problem.Press F1...
I have reinstalled windows XP and it completetly formatted the drive. Any thoughts? Thanks

 

[G0AOZ]

I have reinstalled windows XP and it completetly formatted the drive. This sounds like you were surprised it happened...

The original message suggests that the hard drive may be starting to fail. Download the hard drive manufacturer's disk diagnostics software and run a full test. This ought to show up any faults. You could also run something like MHDD on it - this will show you slow-to-read data blocks which are often a prelude to the development of bad (unreadable) blocks on the disk.

Whilst old disks can still be good disks, older drives are more likely to fail. How old is this drive? Manufacturers often print on the drive the date it was built.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[goombawaho]

Get your data backed up somewhere else ASAP and follow above instructions. Your playing russian roulette with that drive - potentially.

You can get all the major brands' diagnostic tools on this CD, which is bootable. Do it like NOW. Run the LONG test if one is offered vs. the short test.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

Go half way down the page to "Mirror Sites" to download. It's NOT the yellow box at the top of the page.

 

[meloadri]

Thanks for your prompt response. It was an old drive (2004). I read a thread somewhere that suggested if it was a Maxtor to just toss it. I decided to do that since it was old and also I had to wait for it to cool down for me to remove it since it was extremely hot. So something was definetly wrong with it. Thanks.

 

[vacunita]

If it was really really hot it suggests some sort of short in the control board. So yeah tossing it was probably the best idea.

You should be able to get a new one for fairly cheap these days.

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[G0AOZ]

Some of those old Maxtors did get very hot even when new and in full working order...

I always felt unhappy about relying on a drive that got so hot you couldn't comfortably hold it. To me it smacks of inefficiency and poor design.

ROGER - G0AOZ.