HDD died?

[tvgts]

Hi,
This morning when booting up, I see a note on screen just after the BIOS test stating that my XP system files are missing or corrupted. After a process of elimination, it appears my HDD has died. In BIOS setup, it shows the HDD details, but when booting off a floppy, my C: drive in dos is the CD-ROM drive, the HDD just doenst appear to be there even though it is correctly connected up (master/primary channel). Ive also tried it in another system as a slave drive (primary & secondary channel) and it is also not recognised apart from in that PC's BIOS setup.

Does anyone have ideas as to what else I can try in order to get it working again, just want to be sure before i throw it out.

Cheers
Terry

[Jen]

What brand is your hard drive? Most manufacturer's have diagnostic utilities that can be run off a bootable floppy or CD which will check your hard drive for errors. You should be able to find them under support on the manufacturer's website.

[tvgts]

cheers, will try that. Brand is Western Digital WD-1200 120GB

[merlin]

Use option 4 of MS Fdisk from a bootable floppy to view any partitions.

The drive format - NTFS or FAT32 - will also detemine if partitions are accessable in DOS.

That an error message stating "my XP system files are missing or corrupted" is posted usually indicates the drive may be accessable. Possibly the drive format is NTFS since Xp defaults to this on installation.




No matter what happens, there is always someone who knew it would
- Anonymous

[Jen]

cheers, will try that. Brand is Western Digital WD-1200 120GB

If the drive is that size, it still should be under warranty. Often a manufacturer will instruct that you run their disk checking utility so that the reported error code can be quoted.

Data Lifeguard Tools 11 diagnostic - Western Digital

Error codes reference

[johnd]

What happens if you try to use Windows XP recovery console from the CDROM?

[tvgts]

hi all,

Found my hard drive to have a Data Address Mark (DAM) Error whatever that means. Followed the instructions to repair but that failed. Unfortunately the result is a dud drive. Still have the receipt so will contact vendor for a replacement.

cheers for all the help everyone, much appreciated!

Terry