Hard drive - after the problem

[BajaRulez]

I work with hardware most of the times as a supervisor, they say the more computers you broke, the more careful and wise you will be. Well, I done my homework allright
I was installing a PC last night, which was gonna be a small server for about 5 PII machines. I somehow couldn't plug the CD-RW and the DVD at the same channel, so I tried plug it to the hard drive. I know how this slows down the system, but I didn't really mind, because this system didn't needed that much speed anyways, while having a P4 and 512 megs of SD was quite enough. So I did this, but after a reboot nothing came on. System halted because of several boot faliures. Probably the damage of the boot sector. Now I downloaded a useful looking prog called Arc Data Recovery Boot Partition Repair 1.94, I hope it can repair the disk. If anyone can help me on this issue, incase this solution fails let me know.

Thanks

 

[Scotsdude]

if i were you, i'd check that whichever drive you've plugged into the same channel as your hard drive isn't set to master as this would set up a conflict, and would stop you from booting properly.

this is quite possibly also why you couldn't put the CDR and DVD drives on the same channel, if they're both set to master.

let me know if this helps.

Scotsdude
I do the best I can with what I know,
and I try to avoid the evil funky chickens......

 

[BajaRulez]

Hi!

Thanks for responding so quickly. Nah, its not the problem. The first thing I did, was to unplug all the other devices, so theres only the HDD in it at the moment. The BIOS recognises it as well, only the boot sector is damaged somehow, and yet it seems to me, that there is no way of repairing it. Thats why Windows wont load. Ifr anyone has a good prog I'll be glad to try it. All other solutions seem to fail...

 

[edfair]

If the sector is damaged the drive is probably dead short of a low lever format. If the boot loader is corrupted then fdisk /mbr will rebuild it. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[BajaRulez]

You know that is actually a great idea. I didnt think of low level, because than all my data will be lost, I dont want that to happen, but I will try out the fdisk comman. Report back soon and thanx!

 

[Kjonnnn]

Can you slave it to another computer to get your data off before you FDISK?

 

[BajaRulez]

Yeah, I will do that today. The thing is, that I will put in an old 1 GB hard drive I just found yesterday. The machine can hopefully than boot up from that and I will reinstall Win2000. So basicaly no re formatting will be needed. I'll write down what I could do today, but first I'll definetly check the repair console first. If that works my problems are over!

 

[BajaRulez]

Finally the problem is over. I installed a 1 gig HDD as a master and boot from that. After giving it a little thought I decided to install Win 2K on thsi device, because this is a 100% working HDD and a Qunatum, so if anything goes wrong than I still be able to log into the OS. I would like to say a few conclusions at the end. First, never touch a machine if its working fine. This is a very important thing, belive me. The second thing to stick with quality stuff. Now Im not certain, that it was me, who damaged the boot sector, anyway, if you can, avoid Samsung HDD drives. Im not saying that they are bad or not working, but I worked with lots of them, because schools order it all the time - the reason is, that its cheap. Spend a bit more money and buy a Quantum (now Maxtor), Western Digital, Seagate or the best in quality in my oppinion, IBM. I usually dont mess with BIOS setting, only at home, but here I had to because of the IDE settings. Now this motherboard is a P4 referencial one, so no added functions, quite concidered as a noname one. If you can, buy ASUS, MSI, Abit or other good ones, because here a lot of settings were missing. Starting from the special settings to the BIOS virus warning system. To be honest I still have a problem, I cant get the CD-RW and the DVD working at the same time and I have no idea why. The BIOS just freezes and wont load the OS if I plug the two together. Now I changed the IDE cable and the jumpers, plus the drives as well, but still it does not work. Oh well, at least theres a CD-RW in it, and thats the important thing, but if anyone could help me on this topic I would be very grateful!

Thanks for all your help so far!

Balázs