Hard Drive: Disk Read Error

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:56 am

As of noon Wensday my computer has stopped working. It will boot up through bios but when it comes to reading info off the hard drive it stops. I have tested the system with the windows CD and the hard drive disconnected and it will boot up there. I don't hear any abnormal sounds from the drive. I don't have a second hard drive or back up on hand to try anything else. From what I have done I can only assume the hard drive has gone suddenly bad.

Is there any thing else else possible that could have similar results? If so then how can I test for those? I am currently looking for a ride to get to Microcenter to buy a new hard drive. I am hopeful that some infomation can be recovered by me from the failed hard drive. I have nothing too important but there are many things that would make the rest of the quarter easier for me. Also I don't want to loose my Diablo2 character I have, such as my Barbarian I have had since I started the game.

XMEN Ashaman DTM · Post by **XMEN Ashaman DTM** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:14 am

Does your BIOS recognize your hard disk?

If so, you may have just some (or many) bad sectors or some kind of corruption to your data. Data corruption can come from anything, really: brown outs, surges, high humidity, high heat, a bad power supply, etc.

Usually the file system is robust enough to figure out what happened. But only if it keeps an index or journal are you going to be able to recover your data through software that you have access to. There are some methods for getting things off of harddrives, even after you've zeroed the drive. So, unless you have a scratch on your platter, you'll likely be able to get info off of it. Even with a scratch on the platter, sometimes you can still pull info off of it with some funky statistical algorithms.

Oh and you might have a loose cable too. I have only had one harddrive completely fail on me. It went, "boing", "plunk", "boing", "plunk", and wouldn't let data be read off of it.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 10:35 pm

I am currently running on the new hard drive.

My old hard drive shows up on the BIOS but when it tries to get the boot sequence from the hard drive it dies. I had reseated the connections, booted the computer without it, then booted the system with the hard drive and still had the same problem. From what I can tell, either a component of the hard drive failed or some one hacked it and f'ed it up. I will know tomarrow night when I hook up the old hard drive and see if windows can make heads or tails of it.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:53 pm

Up date on whats going on:

New hard drive is installed and running. Windows and all basic programs are installed and running. Setup is now resembling what I had.

I just tried putting the old drive in as secondary and it showed up on the bootup as giberish that stopped the process. So I can't even acess it right now.

Since my new drive was bought as a OEM I don't have a box or static protecting plastic to ship the old drive to Iceman. I am currently asking around to see if anyone has some stuff I can use. Current though is to ship the drive down in the protective plastic that the new drive came in and put that in a box with some kind of buffer.

XMEN Ashaman DTM · Post by **XMEN Ashaman DTM** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 12:50 am

When you switched your drive over to be a slave, did you set your jumpers correctly on the drive?

MegaDeath70 · Post by **MegaDeath70** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 7:15 am

If he didnt have the jumpers correct, it wouldnt show up in the bios or in windows.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 8:32 am

I don't have enough jumpers on hand for both of them. The new drive has the only jumper out of the two and is on the end of the cord. The failed drive has no jumpers (came with none) and is on the second connector on the cord. When the system booted up it showed them both, the new drive as primary and the old as secondary, but the secondary was identified with a couple of coherent letters identifying the brand but beyond that it had everything from *, !, @, and more in it. I don't know if it was doing this before or not because it went through that stage quickly and then stopped at a disk read error. I probably could have disconnected a CD rom and stolen its jumper. But it is too late now, I have already reconstructed the shelfing unit around it so I can get back to school work.

XMEN Ashaman DTM · Post by **XMEN Ashaman DTM** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 12:15 pm

I just noticed that I had a similar problem with a Samsung drive that I bought last summer. The jumper settings in the manual were wrong, and it led to the drive working, but not correctly. The drive was showing as having a capacity of 22 GB, on a 120 GB drive. I was missing the other 98 GB for some reason. I noticed that Samsung had put out a newer guide that corrected the jumper settings error. It was just weird.

MegaDeath70 · Post by **MegaDeath70** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:59 pm

Most likely it would be in cable select mode if no jumpers are used. Of course depending on what mfg it is. Maxtor,WD are that way.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Sat May 20, 2006 9:59 am

Ice, it looks like I will be in Texas for about 24 hours picking up my brothers car from Austin. How far away from I-35(east) do you live? I am currently scheduled to fly to Austin on June 7th and then head out June 8th to get back to Ohio. Ihave to get back quickly because I start my summer job that monday in Columbus (I have to move from Lima back to Columbus and get several things changed). If your not too far off my path then I can just swing by and drop the hard drive off. If your too far then I will just have to put together something in Lima to mail it in since I don't have what it takes here in the dormatory.

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sat May 20, 2006 10:27 pm

TW, why take I35E? Take I35W, they both join together back in Denton anyway.

XMEN Iceman · Post by **XMEN Iceman** » Sat May 20, 2006 11:01 pm

I work at the intersection of I-35W and I-20 on the south side of Fort Worth. You could drop it off or mail it to me. I would love to take a shot at recovering your data.

Give me a holler. david_atchley@hotmail.com

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Sat May 27, 2006 11:50 pm

Looking over my scheduel I will have to mail it to you. I'm tight on time to get back to Ohio and get ready for my new job. Sucks that I pay for a plane ticket back to Texas and can't even spend a day down there enjoying being home again. Besides just getting to see the Capital as I come from the airport to my Brothers pace, I will only have time to stop by either my second church in Rockwall or my first job in Rowlett on Thrusday. I miss Texas, the high sun, broad sky, and wide open feeling.