Hard Drive Problem: Troubleshooting a Quamtun Bigfoot 6.5 Gb

[rpcarnell]

I found an old hard drive in a suitcase. It belonged to my old Compaq computer. It is seven years old. Quamtun Bigfoot 6.5 Gb. It was the main hard drive in that computer.

I tried to install it in my new Compaa, which is also a Pressario, but only a year old. It is in the second ide drive as the slave.

The computer just hangs. I see the message detecting ide drives on the screen, but that's about it. The hard drive disk is not rotating. I just see a diode light on the HD. Nothing more. Cables are well connected, so are the wires, so that's not the problem.

What's going on? I even smacked the hard drive, and the problem continues.

 

[mathmike]

have you checked the jumpers to make sure it is set a slave and not master, what about enableing your slave in cmos.

 

[rpcarnell]

Actually, I am sure it is in Cable Select.

I have failed to enabled the driver in CMOS.

There's a lot in that hard drive, but I am afraid it is gone. :(

 

[Pengwuino]

The hard drive is dead, almost no doubt about it. Thats what dead hard drives usually do, hang on detection

 

[Lyuokdea]

The hard drive is dead, almost no doubt about it. Thats what dead hard drives usually do, hang on detection

I don't think so. Usually a dead HD hangs the drive, but I've rarely seen the system hang on a dead slave drive. System's shouldn't even hang on a dead main drive, it should go to a "No Operating System Found Screen" but a computer does not need a HD to run.

I would try to manually set the settings and also I worry about power levels on the computer and whether, if you have a lot of other side devices on to, whether the HD is throwing you over what your power supply can put out. Try taking out some side devices that you don't need for the system to function and then try again.

~Lyuokdea

 

[Pengwuino]

No I am pretty sure its dead. A dead HD will half of the time hang the system on the EIDE Scan. Its looking for something and it sees signs of a drive but it doesn't get the rest of the information it needs. Incorrectly set drives (slave/master) usually just don't come up during the scan

 

[rpcarnell]

I am sure it is dead too, but I'll try removing a few devices just to see what happens. This hard drive is huge and old. Maybe it consumes a lot of power.

But I doubt it. What a shame because there's a lot in that hard drive. Bummer

 

[rpcarnell]

I did something stupid and opened the HD. The disks inside look almost new. Some dust particle touched one disk, but I closed the HD before there was more damage.

It can rotate just fine. No stuck disk, but maybe some part of the circuit is damaged. If that's the case, then I am in trouble, unless of course the damage comes from a capacitor or diode, which is replaceable. I just don't know what HD parts can be damaged by time so easily.

 

[delton]

Although taking the cover off was stupid.. it should be ok

Probably the only hope left is to boot from a floppy and run chkdsk... that would check for corruptions and hopefully fix em. If you can't do that, then it's probably dead. If u really wanted to recover the data on the drive u could try replacing the slave (chipboard on outside of drive) with a new one or one from a similar model...

 

[Integral]

It is pretty rare for modern hard dirves to operate in the CS mode. This would require a special IDE cable. I doubt that it will work in CS. you need to be sure that that your master is jumpered correctly, some HDs have a different setting for master alone and master with slave. The slave must also be jumpered as slave.

 

[Mariko]

Heres a suggestion try unplugging the main harddrive (master) putting the old drive in as master and booting the computer up with just the old drive..if you have not formatted the drive check the system on it such as windows and the version.If your current harddrive(the new one) is running windows XP and the old drive is running windows 95 or something this could be the problem it hangs one version of windows works off of a FAT32 and the other NTFS..Otherwise i would just try to format the drive.good luck

 

[Donski]

..Otherwise i would just try to format the drive.good luck

Whatever you do, don't format the drive! If you do then you will lose everything for sure.

Also, taking it apart was the wrong thing to do. The heads ride so close to the discs that any piece of dust can cause a crash. It should only be taken apart in a "clean" room.

When you plug it in and turn on the power, can you feel the centrifugal force of the discs spinning? Can you hear the heads moving trying to access the discs? Normally those drives were pretty noisy. If you can't hear anything when you power up then your drive is shot. If the info is all that important to you then you may be able to take it in and get an expert to take some of the data off of it for you.

If the drive is still good then it's probably the jumper settings as others have suggested. And make sure you have good cables, those ribbon cables break easier than you may think.