Possible hard drive help, please??

Saturday, April 17, 2004 by Minion_Bob73 | Discussion: Stardock Software

I know this may not be the place to ask but I am having some issues with a hard drive. I have a drive that is used strictly for backup, windows is no where on it. It was just replaced by the manufacture a month and a half ago. It was working fine, now if I leave it connected my main drive won't even boot windows or it sits forever trying. Gave up after an hour of it trying to boot yesterday. There is also a beeping you can hear that sounds when the hard drive light flashes. Almost seems like it goes off when it is accessing files on that drive, but it shouldn't need to when it boots up. Now it only does this if the backup is connected, my other drive works fine without it. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to how I could get it working to at least get the data off it. But how can I do that if I can't get my good drive to load windows with the backup connected. I thought there was a way to get data off the drive but it is just puzzling me, if anyone out there can help would be most grateful. If I forgot anything please ask, I don't won't to lose the 5 years worth of data on it.

And if I put this post in the wrong place, sorry. Thanks again to anyone who might be able to help.
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yrag
Reply #21 Thursday, April 22, 2004 2:23 PM
Yeah...I think this is going to get down to a Windows config problem....the drive letter per se doesn''t matter if (and that''s a big if) they were added or powered up in the correct order. Done incorrectly he could very well be trying to run this under a PIO/DMA-Word driver...anyway, when he gives the set-up I''ll know and it should be a short task to get it up and running.



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Minion_Bob73
Reply #22 Friday, April 23, 2004 8:12 AM
My motherboard has two IDE connections, there labeled IDE 1 and 2. The two hard drives are on IDE 1 and the cd-rw and dvd are on IDE 2. Disconnected the zip drive completely, still no luck. I am going to try unplugging the cd drives from the motherboard and put another new cable to the hard drives and see if that works. Maybe if the only things connected to associate to drive letters is the hard drives it will boot to windows. Because I agree that something seems to be getting in the way when it boots. If everything is booting fine without the seagate drive and only messing up when its connected, it does seem like something with it is causing confusion.

If that fails, am going to take the whole thing apart tonight and just connect only what is necessary to run, if it is confused about drive letters, maybe that will help. If that still a no go, I am going to take it over to a friends this weekend and try to connect to there system and see if it works. Maybe if I can get it to connect to a different machine I can copy the files. It is worth a shot a this point. Before I do any of this tonight, will check back and see if you guys have any suggestions. Thanks.
[Message Edited]

yrag
Reply #23 Friday, April 23, 2004 10:17 AM
Dis-connect the two CD Roms and either use that IDE (2) connector with the new cable, for the drive you want to get the files off of (you do not have to move the jumper being you''''re using a separate IDE connector) or leave it setup as slave with the boot drive on the same cable. Either way you do it, when you boot up go into the bios and see if it recognizes both drives correctly and that your original Boot drive still shows as your Boot drive. If everything shows correctly in bios, save and exit bios and it will boot into Windows. Now go into Control Panel/ Administrative Tools/ Disk Management and see how Windows shows your drives...it should be the same as the bios. If it is, use the floppies and get the files off the drive and put them to a partition on the boot drive. If these are just ''''Storage'''' files with no .exe''''s running, you can do it right in Windows if you want to (as well as formatting the drive). Turn off ''''puter and install new drive as Master IDE #2 (now you need to change the jumper) . Repeat the steps above w/bios and Windows Admin Tools and if everything is still correct (Drive letters should show C,D), then turn off and hook both CD Players as slaves to IDE #1 and IDE #2. After the boot into Windows, your Letters should now be A,C,D, (drives) and E,F (CD Roms). If it does not boot after installing CDs then do them one at a time so we know which (CD) drive has the conflict. (it could very well be both, since they both require DMA mode).

If everything works, then you now will be able to transfer files to the extra HD.

Having said all that, if when you do all this and it doesn''''t work, I need to know at what point it stopped booting..........







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[Message Edited]

yrag
Reply #24 Friday, April 23, 2004 6:53 PM
I just noticed I should have added....when you get to the point where you put the new drive in, do as I stated and go into bios to make sure they show correctly, but then save, exit and boot using the floppies . Once there you can format the drive....now re-boot into Windows and follow the rest of the instructions as noted above......

Essencay
Reply #25 Saturday, April 24, 2004 6:25 AM
A question....because I''m still XP-n00bish and I don''t understand how the backup drive is trying to come up as the G: drive. With Win9x, I know you can limit the number of drive letter assignments (LASTDRIVE=F) and that you can assign letters in Windows System Properties to your CD-ROM and Zip drive. So if you assigned D,E and F to your CD-ROMS and Zip, the drive wouldn''t show up if the LASTDRIVE=F command was used. Is there something similar to this with XP? The ability to force XP not to look for or assign letters beyond a specific letter?

yrag
Reply #26 Saturday, April 24, 2004 11:11 AM
If I understand your question, there are no limits as to drive assignments in XP. Normally it will assign ''letters'' as to what they are (ie: HDs as C,D,etc... and CDROMs and ZIP drives after that). Many times it will just use the next letter when adding something after the original setup. While there is no problem in it doing this, sometimes with a HD (Internal, External, ZIP, whatever) it indicates that Windows has not identified the add-on correctly and/or at some point you''re going to have a problem. If you were to do a fresh install of XP it would show everything it the correct order...to avoid having to do a new install and get them in the correct order, you can (as I instructed in one of the above posts) just disconnect everything but the HDs, let Windows assign them and then add everything else and XP will assign them correctly as if you did a clean install...



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Jafo
Reply #27 Sunday, April 25, 2004 6:26 PM

Rule one with getting important data....don''t ''move'' it....''copy'' it. When you KNOW you have it copied safely you can delete if from the original location.

If your OS has ''seen'' this backup drive at one time or another...and assigned a letter or you have....then in theory things ''should'' work.....unless there is a formatting or boot sector/initialising error on the drive...or physical damage to the drive''s platter.

If the data is important....the best advice is NOT to trial-and-error with getting to it but to take your drive to a competent tech and have the data retrieved first.....then play with settings etc.

More often than not....a mis-interpreted suggestion will have you wiping the data rather than saving it...


yrag
Reply #28 Sunday, April 25, 2004 8:58 PM
Paul - I don't have a clue where that tirade came from, but you're absolutely right about 'mis-interpreted suggestion'. In the interest of all, I will refrain from participating further in these threads.



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Jafo
Reply #29 Monday, April 26, 2004 1:30 AM

yrag....it''s certainly not anything to do with your assistance in these things...as you are always on the button.....but it has always been my experience that the best advice is only as good as the competence of the recipient, not that of the advisor...

When retrieving important data it is more easily or reliably ''saved'' by copying, rather than moving...as if there is a data loss in ''transit'' you tend to find you lose the source and the destination.

Important data retrieval is safer in the hands of the competent, rather than assuming correct advice will be followed correctly....cos we all know what ''assuming'' makes us....


Minion_Bob73
Reply #30 Monday, April 26, 2004 10:53 AM
I would of gotten back to this sooner but it just seems to not want to completely work. Finally got the backup drive to work by doing as you suggested and put each drive on its on IDE cable. It detected the drive and was able to move some of the files off the drive, but windows kept losing it for some reason, would have to go back into disk management and have it redetect the seagate drive. After I got most of what I wanted it off it, I powered down and disconnected the backup drive. When I turned it back on bios found everything it should have but when it got to where you should normally see the windows bootscreen all I get is the message "error loading operating system". This is the drive that was working fine. So, I thought I would try reinstalling xp, that maybe it had just had enough. It does start the install, but when it get to where it reboots the first time, you get the same message. I have to admit, of all the error messages I have ever seen, never got that one before.

At least I was able to get the stuff off the backup drive so that solves that problem. Now I just have to get the main drive to boot back up. I will figure this out sooner or later. If you have any ideas be glad to hear them, but will understand if you have had enough of me. Thanks for all the help you have given.

Essencay
Reply #31 Monday, April 26, 2004 1:25 PM
If your main drive was fine before you moved some of your backup files over and it is now not booting up right, what are the chances that you infected it with a virus that you had previously backed up, without knowing?

Minion_Bob73
Reply #32 Monday, April 26, 2004 8:38 PM
I guess anything is possible. That is something I actually wondered about myself. Everything from the backup drive was scanned at some point before it went on there, but that doesn't mean there isn't one there. I have Norton Antivirus cd and I think you can boot with it to check. I will give it a shot. Just don't know if it will scan without running it from within windows. It's worth a shot at this point.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Minion_Bob73
Reply #33 Wednesday, May 5, 2004 7:19 AM
I thought I would let you guys know I got everything back up and running. Would of posted sooner but it has taken this long to get everything working. It ended up that my power supply was bad and it kinda just went downhill from there, but all hard drives are working now.

I wanted to give you guys a big "THANK YOU". If it hadn't been for all the help you gave me I would of lost all my data. You were of great help, especially yrag and essencay, I can't thank you guys enough.

As for the comment from jafo, I understand what he was saying but don't necessarily agree with it. I consider myself a competent person, at least enough to follow directions. I would never blamed anyone but myself if something went wrong and I deleted my files. Everyone here was just trying to provide me some help I ask for and they all did a great job with it.

yrag
Reply #34 Wednesday, May 5, 2004 11:45 AM
Glad it's working. Try not to be too hard on Jafo....you know what he's like when he's 'remonstrating' As for me...trust me when I say I would have let you take the blame if it got screwed up



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Jafo
Reply #35 Thursday, May 6, 2004 8:44 AM
I can remonstrate better then the next man....so there!.....

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