Hard Drive Failure

[Bounty_Bam]

Those of you who saw my 'Floppy Drive' post, will know that I'm having trouble with a hard drive.. Ive had it for about 2 years now, and it broke about a year ago.

When I boot up with it as a master, it gets to the 'Windows XP' boot screen with the blue sliding bar scrolling across...but then it just wont get past this point (I have to physically reboot the inhumain way)

When I set it as a Slave, I just get know where at all, and have to do the same.

Ive ran a few Hard Drive Repair utilities via boot, and recieved a few different verdicts:

- there is no partition on the drive
- some system files are missing, like command.sys & config.sys (I copied this over <A:\copy config.sys c:\>

When I try and reinstall windows XP, it says there's no Hard Drive or that theres no partition..


I have attempted to repair this drive a few times now, but with no luck..

I would apprechiate ANY help in getting this drive running once again cheers

[MSIC]

I would say you have to diagnose whether or not there is a fault on the drive (and i suggest that there probably is, but it's worth checking).
Option 1: Boot from a different hard drive with this one as a second one, and try to read it.
Option 2: Run a Linux LiveCD (i suggest Knoppix) and run a SMART checker. Or better yet get the data off ASAP onto a USB memory stick or similar.

[Hunain]

Well, try booting up with the XP CD, run setup from Boot menu, it should detect your HDD even if there is no partition, then you can create partitions, format them and try installing windows.

[Bounty_Bam]

Ill try those now

[Bounty_Bam]

I would say you have to diagnose whether or not there is a fault on the drive (and i suggest that there probably is, but it's worth checking).
Option 1: Boot from a different hard drive with this one as a second one, and try to read it.
Option 2: Run a Linux LiveCD (i suggest Knoppix) and run a SMART checker. Or better yet get the data off ASAP onto a USB memory stick or similar.

Option 1: When i boot with my (working HDD) and this one as a second, i get passed the boot screen then its just black.

Option 2: I a Linux Program ok with Windows?

[Bounty_Bam]

Well, try booting up with the XP CD, run setup from Boot menu, it should detect your HDD even if there is no partition, then you can create partitions, format them and try installing windows.

When I try and run the XP Setup with this HDD, it says theres no hard disc drives found :S

[Bounty_Bam]

I also tried these commands in MS-DOS:


copy D:\i386\ntldr C:\
1 file copied


copy D:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\
1 file copied

I also tried "bootcfg" but that didnt work...



Also: when I try and get into safe mode, it get stuck at:

...partition(1)\Windows\System32\Drivers\Mup.sys

[Hunain]

What does BIOS say? does it detect the Hard drive? Is it SATA or IDE?

[Bounty_Bam]

yeah it detects it fine (whether Master or SLave). Its IDE

[MSIC]

Option 1: When i boot with my (working HDD) and this one as a second, i get passed the boot screen then its just black.

Option 2: I a Linux Program ok with Windows?

That it's not allowing you to boot to windows using a good hard drive almost certainly suggests that your problem hard drive is failing or has now failed. It may still be readable to get data off, but it's fingers crossed time.

As for using Linux, as long as any Operating System can read from NTFS (as the newest Ubuntu can, and Knoppix can, as well as a few others,) then you might be able to read the data you want to recover and then write to a USB stick (or external hard drive, or a second DVD writer or even email it maybe).
I can't remember off the top of my head which programs to use in Knoppix, but it's surprisingly self-evident (i used it about a year ago and just found my way using the well laid out menus and the in-built help).

Of course, you can also search on a Knoppix-specific forum (or Ubuntu or whatever) for better advice than i can give.

[peterb]

MSIC has pretty much got it covered - if you boot off a knoppix live CD to the graphical interface, provided the hard drive is recognised, you can drag and drop the files off it onto a USB stick. The drives will automount, so it is straightforward.

I have to say though, given that "the drive broke last year" (you didn't say what broke or what you did to fix it) and the problems you have had this time, you may not get anything back - particularly if the partition table is damaged or the surface of the disk is damaged. In that case yo either need some different tools or a data recovery company - which will not be cheap. It depends how much the data is worth to you.

[Bounty_Bam]

Can you download Knoppix Live CD in a package? All i seem to be able to find is each file on its own :S if that IS the right thing ive found :S

[Bounty_Bam]

::KNOPPIX RESULT::

The Linux Penguin comes up at the top of the screen.
Starts loading up.
Says: Cant find KNOPPIX systemfiles or something along those lines?


Have I done something wrong?

[MSIC]

I am confused, so i apologise if this sounds a little patronising, but i'm going to go through some basic points here.
Actually this may sound alot patronising, but needs to be done.

Knoppix is an operating system. You therefore need to boot into it from cold, in the similar way that you boot into Windows when you turn the computer on. But you do not boot into Windows.

You therefore need to have the Knoppix OS downloaded and saved onto a disc.
You can get it from here for example.
Or here. Let us know if you are happy and familiar with downloading torrents etc, as this is often the quickest way (using something like utorrent). There are actually a choice of 2 of the 5.11 versions, a CD and a DVD version, i'd say if you wanted to be quicker the CD version is good enough to get.
This will download an ISO file, which is a disc image.
You then need a disc burning program like Nero to write that ISO to a disc, and then you are ready.

Once the burnt disc is written & ready, put back it into the optical drive.
Restart your computer.
If needed, go into the BIOS and set your optical drive as the first boot device, and save.
When the computer starts booting from the disc, it'll bring up a menu first of all, and the top most option will be to go into Knoppix. You can either select it, or leave it as it'll get selected after 30 seconds anyway.

Wait about 2 or 3 minutes for the whole thing to load into your computer's RAM, and bingo.

If there is anything that you want explaining better, please post back again.

Once again, really sorry to sound so blatant and i'm sure you know all the above already. (Maybe it'll be useful for someone else one day?)

[Bounty_Bam]

I am confused, so i apologise if this sounds a little patronising, but i'm going to go through some basic points here.
Actually this may sound alot patronising, but needs to be done.

Knoppix is an operating system. You therefore need to boot into it from cold, in the similar way that you boot into Windows when you turn the computer on. But you do not boot into Windows.

You therefore need to have the Knoppix OS downloaded and saved onto a disc.
You can get it from here for example.
Or here. Let us know if you are happy and familiar with downloading torrents etc, as this is often the quickest way (using something like utorrent). There are actually a choice of 2 of the 5.11 versions, a CD and a DVD version, i'd say if you wanted to be quicker the CD version is good enough to get.
This will download an ISO file, which is a disc image.
You then need a disc burning program like Nero to write that ISO to a disc, and then you are ready.

Once the burnt disc is written & ready, put back it into the optical drive.
Restart your computer.
If needed, go into the BIOS and set your optical drive as the first boot device, and save.
When the computer starts booting from the disc, it'll bring up a menu first of all, and the top most option will be to go into Knoppix. You can either select it, or leave it as it'll get selected after 30 seconds anyway.

Wait about 2 or 3 minutes for the whole thing to load into your computer's RAM, and bingo.

If there is anything that you want explaining better, please post back again.

Once again, really sorry to sound so blatant and i'm sure you know all the above already. (Maybe it'll be useful for someone else one day?)

ill do that now

is this it?

KNOPPIX_V5.1.0CD-2006-12-30-EN.iso