Is this Hard drive dead?

[MrBelvedere]

Ok, i had a 200gb seagate IDE hard drive that i replace w/ a SATA. This hard drive had a 30gb partition w/ linux installed on it, and the rest NTFS partitioned being used for storage when i dual booted into XP. When I replaced it i deleted both partitions, formatted, and then copied some files onto it for the person i was selling it to. He told me he couldn't boot w/ that drive connected. He said it just freezes at the windows splash screen. Works fine w/o that drive connected. I took it back home and connected it back to my machine and the same thing happens. He said (although i didn't try) that he had some error when he tried booting w/ an XP installation disc as well. I'm wondering if this is b/c GRUB is still loaded on the MBR so i'm trying to download a live cd to fix that. Does anyone know how to fix this, or is it a problem with the hard drive itself?

 

[robisbell]

they need to LL format the drive. they can use the HDD manufacturers tools to do that.

 

[cubby1223]

Sometimes linux prevents Windows from being able to use the drive. If you have an old Windows ME/98 cd, boot to it and run the command:
fdisk /mbr

A site with little more instructions & copies of programs:
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/qna/1742.html

 

[jackschmittusa]

See no need to low level format.

Did it boot OK for you before you gave it to him? Did you load XP or just put some files in the root directory?

If you get to the Windows splash screen, you are past the boot loader , so I don't think it is Grub. Doing what cubby mentioned will fix if it is a problem though.

Any idea what error he got booting from the cd? Booting from the cd should have bypassed the hd.

 

[MrBelvedere]

I just copied some random files in the root directory. It booted for me at first when it was unpartitioned space. Then I powered down, took it out and gave it to him. Didn't work on his, and now it does the same on mine as well. I'll try the fdisk /mbr. Thanks.

 

[robisbell]

I'd suggest you use the HDD manufacturer's software to fully wipe the drive clean.

the fdisk may work, but the manufacturers tools will "clean the slate" of the drive.

 

[MrBelvedere]

Well, I did a zero-fill with the seagate disc utility. Now I can't completely tell if anything is different, but when i booted this time instead of hanging at the windows splash screen it just went to a pure black screen. I let it sit for about a minute and then it went to the splash screen and hung there, but i left it alone for about 2-3 minutes and it eventually booted into windows. So I can't really tell if anything is wrong now. Normally that part of the boot process takes 2 seconds instead of 3-4 minutes.

 

[Skewer324]

Sounds like a simple case of bad sectors. Have you checked it using a hdd scanner?

The manufacturer's one is here: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-...rt/downloads/seatools/

I prefer Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test from here: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

Do a thorough/advanced/long test (same thing, different terms) and report its results.

My money's on bad sectors because of this quote, "Works fine w/o that drive connected."

 

[MrBelvedere]

Well, after contacting seagate support, i'm still convinced it's the MBR. They said their zero-fill utility doesn't touch the MBR, so it only zero-filled the rest of the drive. I'm wondering though, is it possible to do an fdsik /mbr on that disk from within windows ? I don't currently have a dvd/cd rom connected (long story).

 

[jackschmittusa]

You need to boot into DOS to run fdisk. Have a floppy drive? Can you boot DOS from a thumb drive (would have to be formatted with FAT16)? If you can borrow a cd drive, you can create a DOS bootable cd.

 

[Skewer324]

I trust your judgment that it's an MBR issue, but it seems to me it wouldn't be a waste of time to do a extended fitness test of the sectors.

 

[Narse]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
You need to boot into DOS to run fdisk. Have a floppy drive? Can you boot DOS from a thumb drive (would have to be formatted with FAT16)? If you can borrow a cd drive, you can create a DOS bootable cd.

I agree 100% boot with just this drive connected and use the fdisk /mbr command and try that.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I had an issue like this after running Ubuntu and I couldn't boot off of the windows CD. I fixed it by unplugged the SATA drive while the computer booted. I waited until the windows installer started up, then plugged in the drive. Worked like a charm (although this is only possible with SATA drives).

 

[MrBelvedere]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I had an issue like this after running Ubuntu and I couldn't boot off of the windows CD. I fixed it by unplugged the SATA drive while the computer booted. I waited until the windows installer started up, then plugged in the drive. Worked like a charm (although this is only possible with SATA drives).

This seems like a good idea. Although my friend's computer has no SATA drives. It does have a pci IDE bus though which i don't know if that's doing anything, but nothing i've tried so far works. I tried an fdisk /mbr and got an error writing to disk no changes were made to the mbr error. I tried doing a complete format w/ seagate's acronis utility that didn't work. I tried booting to a live ubuntu cd and ran dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=512 count=1 that didn't work. Any ideas?

 

[robisbell]

try replacing the IDE cable with a new one.

 

[MrBelvedere]

Well, it's been tried on 3 different computers with 3 different cables so that's not it.

 

[robisbell]

okay, and the systems you tried, they still used a IDE drive? what type of IDE cables were they? ATAT33, ATA66,ATA100,ATA133?

 

[jackschmittusa]

ATA33 is a 40 conductor cable. All other ATA speeds require 80 conductors. Seagate (ATA100) will work on either, but slower on 40 conductor.

 

[Nocturnal]

I had Ubuntu installed on one of my hard drives and when I wiped it to install XP Pro I never had any problems like that.

I highly suggest you use the SeaTools diagnostic CD or the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test an run an ADVANCED test on it and see what it comes up with.