testing hdds
September 3rd, 2010 / Author: adminIs my hard drive dead or not? Please read on.?
I have a hard drive that I have been trying to revive for weeks. At first, I just simply wanted to reformat my drive because my PC was running so slow. That didn’t work and got into a position that I now had no OS on the system. I then tried whatever I could to wipe the drive and start from scratch. Now I get blue screened when trying to reinstall XP (either from Recovery CDs or another PC’s CD). I have some utilities CDs that work (Ultimate Boot CD, Disk Utilities, etc.) but when I try to do a test on the hard drive I always get a message stating there were no HDDs found. But when I use PC Doctor and run all tests (including the Short and Long hard drive test) they all pass. The hard drive is not making any loud or clicking noises and the rest of the components either (I have the lid off).
Is there any chance I messed up some settings when using a wipe utility? In short, How do I find out for sure the drive is shot on my own or w/o hooking up to another PC? Please, only useful info.
Sorry to see that there are others like me who ‘Can Make ‘em Drink’. I’ve spent untold hours trying to resurrect dead or dying drives. Recently, I deceided life’s too short, and have taken a hammer to several drives over the last few months.
When you can buy a brand new 500 GB SATA/300 Seagate for less than $100.
Sorry for the Sermon.
Drive Cable – Try an 80 conduct IDE cable, the 40 conductor cables can cause problems in BIOS.
If the HDD & CDROM are on the same IDE cable, split them up (i.e. Two seperate IDE cables).
If infact, you have taken the lid off the drive exposing the platters, etc. to dust and humidity the drive is doomed even if you get it running again. These drives are assembled in a Clean Room environment for a reason.
Good Luck
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