Hard Drive Woes

[Seedubs]

Firstly Hello all!

I have a scan of the forums and some info pertained to this problem but others didnt so I am still a little confused as to what is the problem. Its a bit of a long one so I would appreciate the effort!

Firstly the machine in question is:

XP3200 (32 Bit), ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Mobo, 2 Gig of DDR Ram, Radeon X850XT Graphics card and Audigy Soundcard. The hard drives in question are both (initially) SATA drives 80 Gig WD Raptor and an 80 Gig ANOTHER. Running XP Pro (SP2 etc)

The problem began when I decided to have a fresh reinstall of XP onto the Raptor. I backed up all my important data to the other 80 gig drive and then reinstalled all and everything was fine until the next day, went to boot the machine and had a BSOD, tried all sorts to recover the drive but as soon as the drive was accessed it would blue screen and reboot, so the only option was to go into the SATA Controller on boot and carry out a low level format. I then reinstalled XP (again) and it all booted ok.

A few days later and I began to get check disk on boot, not always but very often, then it died again and went through all of the above again. Did this again yesterday and I decided to take out the Raptor and buy a new drive, this time a IDE PATA drive (250 Gig SAMSUNG).

So reinstalled XP on the New Drive and when it booted I realised that the XP had named the new drive (F and the old backup (SATA) as C:. I figured I might be able to rename the drives, but couldnt work it out. Anyhow on reboot the SATA Drive gave out an error of missing or corrupt HAL.DLL?? On windows directory, well since windows wasnt on that drive I assumed it was getting confused as it was named as (C.

So I decided once again to reinstall Win XP on the new Samsung without the SATA plugged in, this went fine, but now when I reboot, I get a boot disk error unless I leave the XP Disk in the drive??? And the SATA Drive does not appear in the Explorer directories? I also still get the error of HAL.DLL on the SATA Drive, all is very confusing??

The Raptor I assume is dead, but having suffered all the above problems, is it really knackered? Has the motherboard SATA Controller chip died? Is there some other underlying problem? Power? Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated, as I am loosing the will to live.......

Chris

 

[ski]

If possible, run the diagnostics on the Samsung HD with the SATA drive disconnected:

http://erms.samsungusa.com/customer/sea/jsp/faqs/faqs_ars.jsp

 

[Seedubs]

Sorry but your link errors on me? Is it a Samsung drive tool of some sort?

 

[ski]

Sorry about that.
At the Samsung site, click on North America/United States/Support/FAQ's/HD Icon/and type Diagnostics in the box.

 

[Seedubs]

Many thanks for the link, once the Samsungs download centre is up again I will download the utility, but one thing I did notice now is that I cannot boot the primary drive with the SATA drive connected as I get the HAL.DLL Missing or corrupt message on startup?

I will run the diagnostic and see if that solves the initial Samsung boot sector problem (even though it will boot with the XP Disk in the CD?? Missing Boot.ini?) and then try with the SATA drive on again.

Will report back when done. Thanks.

 

[ski]

You're welcome.

If the SATA HD is the C drive and the Samsung HD is the F drive when both are connected, then the system is probably trying to boot from the SATA drive which has no O/S installed, and that may be why it's getting the hal.dll error message.

Also, if the Samsung HD passes the diagnostics, then reformat it, and reinstall Windows with the SATA drive disconnected.

 

[Seedubs]

Right did a full scan of the Samsung, no errors and then rebooted it and all appears fine with that drive, XP installed

Now when I run the DOS Diag HUTIL prog from SAMSUNG, it picks up the SATA Drive (any of the two I have) and I then get an access violation on the DOS utility and it crashes back to cursor. Could I have mistakenly installed a newer/older version of the SATA Drivers that are not quite compatible and thus causing these errors? Or possibly the SATA Controller chip on the Mobo has died?

I tried using both Primary and secondary SATA connectors, both the Raptor and Seagate(ANOTHER)can be seen but as soon as any access occurs it crashes out?

How do I go about installing different Silicon SATA Drivers without reinstalling Win? Usually I get a copy on disk and use that as I am installing Windows, but Windows is ok...............help?

 

[ski]

See if this helps:
Go into BIOS, select "Integrated Peripherals" > "OnChip IDE Device" > "OnChip Serial ATA Setting" > either "Combined" or "Enhanced", and save the settings.

 

[Seedubs]

Well I have sorted some stuff out. Unforunately my BIOS does not have those settings Ski, but I downloaded the latest SATA Silicon drivers from ASUS, and reinstalled both at installation of windows and once installed within Windows, I managed to get the Backup SATA drive to be recognised and accessed so that is sorted but the Raptor looks like a loss, which I assumed it was initially, but wondered with all the other problems whether or not it was simply a driver issue.

My only query now is, I can see the Raptor in my Device Manager in System, but not as a drive in Explorer. When I populate the drive in Device Manager it states the drive is 'Not Initialised'? I have reformatted it in the SATA BIOS section but it refuses to appear in Explorer, which seems a little odd. Also my backup SATA drive which is now working, does not have a disk icon within Explorer?

Anyway, many thanks for your help, if you can think of any answers to the Raptor issue it would be appreciated, otherwise I am going to try and get my money back for it as its only 18 months old?

Cheers!

 

[Freestone]

You probably need to initialize, partition and format the Raptor drive from within Disk Management (Start, Run, diskmgmt.msc)

 

[Seedubs]

The only option within the SATA Bios is for a low level format, which I have done, there is no other way to access the drive to carry out any maintenance such as installing a file system etc?

 

[Freestone]

Disk Management is an XP tool that allows you to perform the maintenance tasks I mentioned earlier. I'm unsure why you are looking in SATA BIOS for the tools.

 

[Seedubs]

Many thanks Freestone! I have never used the Disk Management tool before, as I have never formatted/managed a disk from within Windows, I am initialising and formatting it as I speak, hopefully it will be fine.

One more question, would you think the initial failure of the Raptor was a simple driver corruption error, of is it a sign that the drive is on its way out, I suppose only time will tell.

Is it worth me putting the Raptor back as the C: drive (performance wise)?

Once again many thanks for your assistance.

 

[Freestone]

It's hard to say if the Raptor is bad or on its way out at this point. You may have had a memory failure causing the BSODs. If you want some assurance of your drive's health, then I recommend looking on the manufacturer's website for some diagnostics and run them against the drive. Western Digital site is at:

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#dlgtools

Not knowing how you are using your system makes it hard for anyone to make performance configuration recommendation. If you are asking simply from an OS point, I personally would leave things as they are. Perhaps if you provide more details, others may have suggestions of an optimal configuration.