Hard drive gone bad

The most common problems originate

from corruption of the master boot record, FAT, or directory.

Those are soft problems which can usually be taken care of

with a combination of tools like Fdisk /mbr to refresh the

master boot record followed by a reboot and Norton disk doctor

or Spinneret.

The most common hardware problems are a bad controller, a bad

drive motor, or a bad head mechanism.

1. Can the BIOS see and identify the hard drive correctly? If

it can't, then the hard drives onboard controller is bad.

2. Does the drive spin and maintain a constant velocity? If it

does, that's good news. The motor is functioning.

3. If the drive surges and dies, the most likely cause is a

bad controller (assuming the drive is cool). A gate allowing

the current to drive the motor may not be staying open. The

drive needs a new controller.

4. Do you hear a lot of head clatter when the machine is

turned on and initialized (but before the system attempts to

access the hard drive). Head clatter would indicate that the

spindle bearings are sloppy or worn badly. Maybe even lose and

flopping around inside.

5. There is always the possibility that the controller you are

using in the machine has gone south.

1. If the drive spins, try booting to the A> prompt, run Fdisk

and check to see if Fdisk can see a partition on the hard

drive. If Fdisk can see the partition, that means that it can

access the drive and that the controller electronics are

functioning correctly. If there is no head clatter, it may be

just a matter of disk corruption which commonly occurs when a

surge hits you machine and overwhelms the power supply voltage

regulator. It commonly over whelms the system electronics

allowing an EM pulse to wipe out the master boot record, file

allocations table, and primary directory. Fdisk can fix the

master boot record and Norton Disk Doctor can restore the FAT

and Directory from the secondaries.

2. The drive spins but Fdisk can't see it. Try the drive in

another system and repeat the test to confirm that Fdisk can't

read through the drives onboard controller. If it sees it in

another system, then your machines hard drive interface is

bad. You can try an upgraded or replacement controller card

like a Promise or CMD Technologies (there are others) in you

machine after disabling the integrated controller in the BIOS,

but if the integrated controller went south, it may just be

symptomatic of further failures and you'd be wise to replace

the motherboard. Trying the drive in another machine also

eliminates the variable that your machines 12 volt power

output being bad

3. If you get head clatter but a constant velocity on the

drive motor (no surging), you might try sticking the hard

drive in the freezer for about 12 hours. This is an old trick

from back in the days of the MFM/ESDI driver era. This can

cause the drive components to shrink enough to make the track

marker align with the tracks. We don't see that kind of

platter spindle wear much anymore, but back in the old days,

the balancing and bearings weren't as good. Still, under the

right circumstances, it might help. It would depend on how old

the drive is and how many hours of wear have occurred. You

have to be quick to get your info off the drive when it works.

Back then, the drives were much smaller, so there wasn't so

much to copy. So, go after the important data first.

4. The drive doesn't spin. Either the onboard controller is

bad or the motor is bad (assuming you did try the drive in

another machine). It's time to hit the net and local

independent shops to see if you can locate another drive of

the same make and model that's good. Since the drive is

probably an older drive and no longer in distribution, your

best bet is to find an identical used drive. If you know

someone with the same make and model, you might be wise to try

and persuade them to sell you their drive with an offer of

providing them with a free upgraded drive. If you can locate

an identical drive, start with the controller replacement ...

this is the simplest and least invasive. If swapping the

controller doesn't produce the desire result, you can tear

into the drive and swap the motors. While you have both drive

opened up to accomplish this, scrutinize the platters, heads

and armatures. You might even hook the drive up and power it

from a system with both drives attached. This way, you could

see anything that deviates between the actions of both drives

when they are initialized. Swapping patters is unlikely to

produce any positive result. They are a balanced system like

the tires on your car and I suspect that the balance will be

different for each drive as will other variables.

5. There's always Ontrack Corp. who will attempt to recoup

your info starting at $500 and going up from there. They don't

fix and return the drive either.

If the info is all that important to you, I would seek some

professional and experience technician in your locality who

makes his living from servicing and building computer systems

... not just selling them. If you have had much experience

salvaging information from bad hard drives, your likelihood of

success is low. In the case of soft corruption, all utilities

have their eccentricities. Often times, Norton Disk Doctor

will go too far (if you let it). It's wise to just let those

utilities small steps and then have a look at the drive and

see if you can copy it off. Norton will go so far as to rename

directories and files, and even delete them or break them up

into fragments which are useless.

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