HDD cannot be accessed 1

[almawy]

Hello all,
windows xp is not able to recognize my secondary hdd "western digital 40 GB". when computer boots the disk shows in bios as secondary slave but not after windows starts, if i go to disk management i cannot find this drive there !!! I changed cables and jumpers and no way this drive can be seen in xp explorer.
i put this dirve this time as master , and it is recongnised by BIOS again. I boot from winxp cd and setup starts but when trying to start installing windows files on disk i got blue error message bla bla.....
for some reason i can not write to this drive but it is seen by bios , what can be the problem ? please if any suggestions !
thank you

 

[Lemon13]

when its seen in bios means only the controller(on hdd) is working, that does not mean the drive is ok.
does it spin up?
dl diagtool vom wd to check hdd.

 

[bcastner]

Under Disk Management, Action, Rescan

 

[Jazket]

Lemon13 is right, the bios only cares of the HDD Controller, not of the rest, and if one of the disks are damaged (it could be cause of power surges or virus shuttin down your pc without your permission, or your yourself not shutting it down correctly, when the drive was in strong use, like writin to cache or loading a program, or whatever it was doing) then the hard drive is unusable, so dont force, or, try this:

1 - Get a copy or Windows XP, a bootable one, then get into the installation steps, when it goes to show you the Partitions screen, delete all partitions in that drive (im sorry if you have important archives there, but now you are focused in fixing it).

2 - There after deleting all partitions, try creating a new one, like, no more than 5 GB, enough to install a fress copy of windows xp.

3 - Try now to install windows, if it works, then that part of the driver is good, cause it let windows install.

4 - Now after bringing up the new installation, go to disk management and try creating a new partition using the rest of the drive.

If the drive is good you wont have problems creating the new partition. If its bad, you will receive an error (blue screen) when trying to create the partition like this:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
DRIVER_ERROR whatever... or some others like those ones.
Maybe the partiton will be created without problems at all, but it will give you error messages when using it to archive big size files.

Let me tell you that i had the same problem some days ago, with a Maxtor 80 GB, from the 30% to the 100% of the driver size was good, but the starting clusters wasnt, from the 1% to the 29%, and i had a lot of things in there, and someday i tried to make a partition in the unused space, and the driver got messed up for good. So my solution was to buy an new Western Digital 80GB, US$70, and trow the Maxtor drive in my trash can.

Just try what i told you, and if it doesnt work, then im really sorry... i hate when things like that happen....

Jazie

 

[AckNack]

Also, ensure that the jumpers are set correctly on both drives.

If one is jumpered incorrectly, it could cause the drive to "act funny" like this.

AckNack

http://www.diypctech.com

 

[stormbind]

I have a similar problem to almawy (i.e. same symptoms).

The drive...

Works in BIOS
Works in Linux FDISK
Works in MS-DOS FDISK
Works in MD-DOS FORMAT
Works in MS-DOS Read/Write Tests
Works in MaxBlast 3 (Boot Disk) PARTITION & FORMAT
Not detected in WinXP!! Why?

I have created and destroyed the Primary Partition multiple times, replaced the MBR, reformatted multiple times (FAT16 and NTFS) ... and in every case, WinXP won't detect it!!

It's not in Computer Managament or Device Manager.

The ATA/ATAPI controller shows that a device is on the chain, but says data transfer mode: not applicable.

I have checked the I/O controller. I have checked the cables -- everything is in working order. Even the HDD checks out when WinXP isn't running.

I think it's something to do with WinXP HDD initialising... My suspicion is that if the process fails, WinXP either accidentally damages the drive or records the S/N and intentionally rejects it??

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[bcastner]

Download the drive utility software from the drive manufacturer's werbsite. Do a low-level certification of the drive, or a write 0's operation.

Start XP, Disk Management, Rescan hardware. Then let Disk Management partition and format the drive.

 

[satrow]

In Device Manager, View Hidden Devices and see if it is listed.

Andy.

 

[stormbind]

There are no hidden devices.

Just did low-level all 0's format. WinXP still doesn't see it.

It's just WinXP! It works with every other OS in the world (assuming there is a physical connection).

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[stormbind]

I should add, that brings my total tally of unsupported devices to three. 1x Graphics card, 1x Sound card, and now 1x HDD.

Remind me again why we use this system?

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[satrow]

Sounds like a problem with your current installation - HAL, detection....(my machine lists 17 drives hidden).

Have you run any tweaks, disabled any services, etc.?

Have you tried pulling your boot drive and installing XP to this one?

Andy.

 

[stormbind]

Where does it list hidden drives then? I must be missing something!

I don't think there is anything wrong with this installation of XP - I have several hot swappable drives and never experienced a problem.

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Memoria mihi benigna erit qui eam perscribam

 

[satrow]

Right-click My Computer - Manage - Device Manager - (View - Show hidden devices) and click the + next to Disk drives. It should list the drives that have been, but are not currently, attached to the PC.

Andy.

 

[stormbind]

Aha!

Not what was expected, but still a maybe... I did as you said and there were no new "disk drives" and I also did a new scan in which the HDD powered up but was not detected.

However... there is a new catagory called "Storage Volumes" and two entries both called "Generic Volume". There is nothing useful in their properties.

Devices currently attached include...

Primary Master: 1x NTFS Volume
Primary Slave: 1x NTFS Volume
Secondary Master: 1x LS120
Secondary Slave: +The Problem HDD+ 2x FAT Volumes

Are those "Generic Volumes" the 2x missing FAT partitions, or are they the 2x working NTFS partitions?

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Memoria mihi benigna erit qui eam perscribam

 

[satrow]

If the Generic Volumes are solid - they are connected; greyed out if they are not...

You could try uninstalling all volumes, hidden or not, XP will find them on reboot.

Have you tried booting without the LS120?

Andy.

 

[stormbind]

Yes, I tried without the LS120. It doesn't make any difference. I shall remove the volumes and see what happens, but as it only shows 2 ... if they are the NTFS drives ... then it won't make a difference

===> start useless info

Incidentally, I made an (interesting) mistake 2 days ago when I first tried accessing this HDD. I put both the HDD & CDROM as secondary master!

With that setup, WinXP did not detect the CDROM, did detect the HDD, but couldn't initialise it -- that is the closest I ever got to using this drive under XP.

<=== end useless info

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Memoria mihi benigna erit qui eam perscribam

 

[stormbind]

Removing the volumes didn't seem to do anything. WinXP just restarts twice, and at the end of it resetting things to how they were.

I think it's a software compatibility problem with NT.

I tried installing NT3.1 (yeah, old, I know) and this is how it went..

DOS portion copied installation files to the problem drive - clearly no problem.. On restarting, NT portion of the setup couldn't read from the HDD!! What do you make of that? Just like XP isn't it?

There are some settings that might affect it but I only have one spare jacket so can only enable one at a time..

Write cache - disabled
I/O Ready - disabled
Cable select - disabled
Drive compatibility - disabled

I think I have toggled every option. I also increased the I/O wait time in the BIOS setup - nothing helped.

Are any of those options likely to make a difference?

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Memoria mihi benigna erit qui eam perscribam