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View Full Version : Living-dead drive?? HELP!!


fuzzba11
02-08-02, 01:16 AM
Alright, here's my problem. I have two Maxtor 40GB 7,200 rpm ATA100 drives, both which have worked very well since I bought the first one in May last year(which is the one not working) and the second one a few months after. Anyway, the problem:

Re-installed my watercooling, three days ago, after a failed project of integration. Everything went fine, although W2k was takign forever to startup for some reason. It would sit at the Windows 2000 screen, the bar sitting about in the middle, with the color stripes moving along normally, with no HDD reading. The drives were still ok in windows, though, and I was happily playing Q3 off D drive. Then one time I started up, and it didn't detect my primary drive...I turned off my system, made sure all connections were tight, and it worked. Then it stopped detecting my CD-R, which is on Secondary Slave, which I think was because my bong fan was plugged into a molex between that and the drive. I didn't need it, so I figuired I'd fix it later. Started up, realized I only saw two out of four devices on BIOS detect, but couldn't hit del in time, so restarted manually at the OS choice screen. Went in, auto-detected the drives, and started up...noticed none of my icons were showing properly on my desktop.

So, here's what it does...I can still see the drive in BIOS, it detects the size, type, etc, as it should, but w2k doesn't recognize it properly. It just says "Local Drive D:" instead of the label, and none of my shortcuts into the drive work. It won't run scandisk on startup, and generally I'm confused. If I try double click on the drive in my computer it now says: "cannot detect drive d: parameter is not correct." But earlier it said, "Drive D is not formatted, would you like to format it now? Y/N" Anyone have any idea what this could be? I bought the drive in Singapore when I was living there, so I can't really send it back easily. I really want all the data I had on there, too! All my save games, as well as pics of the ex's, animals, etc etc. HELP!

IFMU
02-08-02, 01:50 AM
With my experience. The only time a drive will start doing that - means its dead.... Ive never been able to recover a drive with those kinds of problems... Im thinking that its gone, maybe you could RMA it?

Hopefully Im wrong and someone else can give you better help, but thats my thoughts....

bobt17
02-08-02, 02:30 AM
its probably a long shot but i think i heard something about puting it in the freezer for a while (dunno how long really) and then hooking it up.... its not a fix or anything but it might let u get some of your data off the drive.... also i'm not too sure about it.... it couldent hurt tho....

fuzzba11
02-08-02, 03:05 AM
Originally posted by bobt17
its probably a long shot but i think i heard something about puting it in the freezer for a while (dunno how long really) and then hooking it up.... its not a fix or anything but it might let u get some of your data off the drive.... also i'm not too sure about it.... it couldent hurt tho....

That sounds....bad. I'm going to try convince one of my friends to hook it up to their systems so I can at least determine whether it is a problem with the drive itself or perhaps win2k, etc.

MoPMatrix
02-08-02, 07:13 AM
I've herd of the freezer trick before, but I wouldn't ever put my drive in the frezzer :P

stool
02-08-02, 12:19 PM
Go to Maxtor's webite and download the latest version of the Powermax diagnostic software. It will run various tests on your drive, and let you know whether it is crapping out on you. very easy to use.

fuzzba11
02-08-02, 02:58 PM
Originally posted by stool
Go to Maxtor's webite and download the latest version of the Powermax diagnostic software. It will run various tests on your drive, and let you know whether it is crapping out on you. very easy to use.

Alright, I saw that and was wondering about it, I'll check it out this evening.

mrstatzer
02-09-02, 01:24 AM
I wouldn't suggest putting a harddrive in the freezer. They are not designed for that type of exposure. Just my opinion.

Stick00
02-09-02, 07:47 PM
mine did that today too.I just reset my waterblock and cleaned up my case booted and it wasnt reading the harddrive or secondary drives . freaked out for a min and for some reason i checked my power chain on my drive watcha know my hard drive ribbon was kicked a little out and was giving me the bad reading. check that and it might be your problem.I must have bumped it and move it out when i was getting ****ed off cause my chipset cooler was a bitch too set . good luck!

BigAir
01-29-04, 01:29 AM
I don't know what type of person thought to put an electronic device in the freezer for several hours and then plug it in, but I can vouch that it does work. Several others will back me up too. Give it a shot. What do you have to lose :)

Smartiepants
01-29-04, 04:41 PM
True, if its already dead, then why not. Still seems like a wierd idea to me, someone had balls to try doing that.

UPCguy21
01-29-04, 09:42 PM
Yeah, just make sure you put it in a plastic bag. My cousin wanted me to work on her comp, she said it came up and said no OS, so I hooked it to mine as a slave, I believe it'd been off for a few days, and it actually worked long enough for me to get most of her stuff off of it. A buddy of mine who's around 60ish and has been working on computers says the freezer trick does work. So why not?? If your drive is dead, not like your going to kill it. Sorry about the luck dude, on a side note, hey at least hard drives are getting cheaper now:)

PAWO
01-29-04, 10:23 PM
Freezing the drive allows the platters to physically shrink (on a microscopic level), minimizing the effects of worn or damaged parts temporarily. Thats what it does I believe...of course I've never had to do that, I use seagates, which don't fail. :D

StealtheR
01-29-04, 10:35 PM
its windows problems

i've had problems like this 10000 times with my 200GB WD SE. Thats why i hate WD so bad and i told myself not to ever buy another drive from them. i xchanged for the 5th drive so far.

Here's from my experience thats I do.

1st senerio
use 98 floppy start up disk. boot in and use dos to recover files on bad drives. If this works. great..format the drive completely and drive it back to 0. check for bad sector, run scan disk on it once back to windows.

2nd:
this is the worse case senerio when you can't do anything else. Ok right click on the HD and select format. then choose option Quick format. This will do a light format and windows 100% will recognize the drive again. MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT PUT ANY NEW FILES ON IT. DO NOT USE THIS DRIVE. LEAVE IT ALONE AFTER FORMATTED.

after you done that. go to runtime.org
get yourself their data recovery and run through the drive. I'm sure you can recovery 90+% of your data. I did this a lot o ftimes and recovered my data 9 out of 10 times.

Even i format, format, and format again...i can still get some files back.

you can also use EasyRecovery Pro


MAKE SURE YOU SAVE DATA THAT YOU WANT TO RECOVER TO ANOTHER GOOD DRIVE. DO NOT SAVE TO THOSE DRIVES THAT YOU'RE RECOVERING FROM. OR ELSE IT'LL OVERRIDE THOSE MTF FILES AND f++++ THE FILES UP.
i wish you the best of luck man.

Good luck!