hard drive fail

[Guest_imported]

Hi guys,
I had a maxtor 20GB hard drive with PIII system. My hard disk has a bad sector for a few months and its doesn't give me any problem yet. But now when I boot up my system, my pc hanged after the POST screen with the message "Verying DMI Pool Data". Can anyone help me out to solve this problem? Is it because of the bad sector or some system file corrupted?

 

[edfair]

Not from that bad sector. This is an indication that the BIOS has not found a hard drive that CMOS tells should be there.
Or it could be as simple as your battery gone bad and your comos settings are corrupted. 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.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thank for your advice Edfair. My system detected the hard disk as usual, but the only problem that it's hanged after the POST screen. And i tried to took out the hard drive and put into another system as a secondary slave. The system also detected the hard drive and while inside the windows i got two drive C(primary) and D(secondary). When I tried to open the D drive, windows prompt me that the drive cannot be read. Even I open C drive, all the thing load very slow. So anything goes wrong with my hard drive?

 

[edfair]

You could try rebuilding the master boot record. Put it back in place as the only drive and boot from floppy. At the a: prompt use "fdisk /mbr".
This may or may not make it bootable again. It depends on how the hard drive was originally partitioned and whether you have a hard disk overlay in place to give access to the full space.
If you have a disk overlay problem you would rebuild the master boot, then from the floppy update the drive overlay. 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.

 

[Guest_imported]

When I start up my pc there is a message that says SMART failure predicted please back up your data immediately and replace your harddrive...Is there other ways around replacing my harddrive? What should I do, my computer is not that old! HELP ME!
Thanks!

 

[smaxted]

You might think Im lying but I learned this from Maximum Pc: If there is any important files on your drive that you desperatly need throw it into the freezer for an hour and boot it up. You'll get about 20 minutes of life from it. I' learned it from maximum pc, it works, i had to use it myself

 

[dinosnake]

The DMI BIOS error is from the BIOS data in EEPROM being invalid for the current hardware configuration. Go into the BIOS and either (a) reset the configuration data (usually in the PCI setup) or (b) reset the BIOS to factory, or optimum, defaults. Now, doing (b) will clear any setting that were changed after the motherboard left the factory. If those changes are necessary then the system won't work right. You will, for instance, have to re-setup the drives in the BIOS.

Follow the recommendations located on this link:

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win98/verify_dmi_data.htm

The inability of the second system to read your drive may be indicative of incompatible file system types. If your partition runs Windows 98, say, and the computer you plugged it into runs Windows 95 it cannot read the drive because Windows 95 does not support FAT32 drives. First make sure the OS's are compatible before you FDISK /MBR the drive. Doing so, while the drive is plugged into the other system, will overwrite your valid boot sector (for when the drive is back in your computer) with an invalid sector for the drive's file system type.
Your mileage may vary...

 

[dinosnake]

SMART system predicts failure based on current operational parameters. If failure predicted best to heed warning. Back up data & replce drive. You can run Norton DiskDoctor in Thorough suface scan mode to check drive, but long term life not guaranteed.

Most likely cause are power problem - or just bad drive from factory. Most drives come w/3 yr. warrantee - ck. w/manufacturer.

Your mileage may vary...

 

[Guest_imported]

i have got this same problem, but the only differece is that the disk will not even show up on the explorer or dos. it shows up on the cmos however. i want to use fdisk but it says that there are no fixed disks.

 

[dinosnake]

wosky:
First, boot into DOS mode and run FDISK to see if it can access the physical drive at all. If so (change to the physical drive in FDISK (function 5) and then read the current partition table (function 4)) it will probably say no partitions present.

If it all passes - FDISK can see the physical drive but cannot access the data on it - run a advanced disk repair tool (I recommend Norton DiskDoctor) on the drive to repair the partition table. You can use FDISK /MBR, but (a) that trick only works on the Primary Master drive in the IDE chain, (b) will only properly rebuild the partition table for a one partition drive. If you have 2 or more partitions on the drive FDISK /MBR does not see them and will not write a correct Master Boot Record. Norton DiskDoctor searches all valid locations on the drive for partition data to properly rewrite the master table.

If Norton DiskDoctor did not rewrite a valid MBR let me know. I'll tell you how to wipe the MBR manually & force NDD to write a new one. Your mileage may vary...