Determining if a hard drive is defective

[superpandapower]

Hi,

I was wondering how one goes about determining whether a hard drive is defective. I just purchased a new Hitachi 7K250 250GB hard drive for my Abit NF7-S v2.0. However, the bios can't seem to detect the hard drive's specifics. When I connect it as a slave, the BIOS lists the name as a much of random characters (not model #s) and can provide no specifics about capacity. Windows XP doesn't see it either.

I tried just using it as a master, but that didn't work either so I assume the hard drive is bad. I think the cable is ok as I'm currently using the same cable with my old hard drive.

Right now, I'm assuming the drive is defective and am going to get a RMA, but I wanted to run it by people here as I'm worried I might have overlooked something.

Does anyone have any ideas? I appreciate any help. Thanks a lot.

 

[daniel49]

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm


Drive Fitness
Programs to help analyze, monitor, & restore the health of your drives.
Drive Fitness Test | Data Advisor | SMART Defender

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Drive Fitness Test (v4.01)
This download creates a self-booting DOS diskette to run the DFT utility. The Drive Fitness Test (DFT) provides a quick, reliable method to test SCSI and IDE hard disk drives, including Serial-ATA IDE drives. The Drive Fitness Test analyze function performs read tests without overwriting customer data. (However, Drive Fitness Test is bundled with some restoration utilities that will overwrite data.)

V4.01 changes include:

Added support for new drive models
Continuous improvement
Note: Please see the user guide for help on using Drive Fitness Test.

Additional Documentation: Users guide | White paper | Data sheet

most hard drive vendors have a utility like this usually it comes bundled with the hard drive. This is hitachi's
Dan

 

[daniel49]

you have it formatted and partitioned right? and data cable and power cable are plugged in properly?

 

[superpandapower]

Well, I can't get that far because the BIOS doesn't properly recognize the drive. I've tried all the jumper configurations, but it still won't show up correctly. So I haven't been able to format and partition. The cables were all plugged in correctly. Thanks.

 

[Fern]

Just run the Hitachi drive daniel linked for you. Hitachi will prolly say the same thing when you ask about an RMA. Ie, they will want you to run it first b4 granting an RMA

Fern

 

[superpandapower]

I wish I could run it, the computer won't go past the BIOS screen with this disk plugged in. It always ends up with a "primary slave drive fail" message or a primary master drive fail message.

 

[Barny]

Is it safe to assume you are running just fine with the old drive in the machine then?

It looks like the Hitachi 7K250 250 is parallel model - HDS722525VLAT80
As far as the jumper settings you've attempted. There seems to be additional choices besides Master/Slave. Which of the configurations on this page have you actually tried?

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/d7k250/d7k250jum.htm

 

[superpandapower]

Yeah, I'm running fine with the old drive right now. I tried the top 4 jumper settings and all kept giving me the same error. Also, I hear lots of clicking and scratching on some bootups coming from the drive, which further leads me to believe that it's defective. Other times, the drive appears to not spin up at all. Thanks for your help so far.

 

[Barny]

The clicking and scratching and absense of hearing the drive spin up all indicate a bad drive. The inability of the BIOS to get information off the drive is another.
It sounds like you definitely ought to go the RMA route.

Make sure you tell them these symptoms when you initiate the RMA. That might get them to agree to replace it without first demanding you try to run a Drive Fitness Test or some other utility.

Good Luck

 

[superpandapower]

Alright, that's what I had suspected. Thanks for the help, I'm going to initiate a RMA.