Help! - Tech Support Forums

Tazman · March 17th, 2002, 02:51 PM

I just pulled a major Fubar

.

I spent yesterday formatting an old IBM Aptiva and getting everything set back up for the customer. I always Ghost the drives that I work on in case of a future format. This computer doesn't have a burner in it so I was pulling the drive (old IBM 1.7GB) to temporarily install it in my computer to burn a bootable Ghost image. Well, I dropped the freakin' drive off of the bench onto the concrete floor - about a 3' fall

.

I put the drive back into the computer and tried to boot Windows - no go. It started and got past the Windows splash screen and then an error of "cannot write to drive c". I booted to a 98 boot disk and tried to run scandisk but it would only get to 51% and say it couldn't finish - errors still on the drive.

I went to the IBM site to try to find a diagnostic proggie without any luck. Do any of y'all have any suggestions on a diagnostic program / utility run from DOS before I have to shell out the bucks to replace a cr@p 1.7GB drive with a 20GB drive?

I'll beat y'all to the punch - I'm a freakin' idiot for not having a rubber mat in front of the bench - not that I think it would've helped much from that hieght

.

Thanks y'all,

Mike

AuraEdge · March 17th, 2002, 03:02 PM

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Try DFT, first one.

I dont think itll work, but cant hurt to try

Tazman · March 17th, 2002, 03:29 PM

AuraEdge - That was quick! Thanks for the link. I d/l'ed it and made the disk. I'm running Norton Disk Doctor right now and will run that when it's done.

So far Norton fixed a double FAT file and just repaired a Win Swap cluster.

I'm praying REALLY hard right now that I don't have to start all over again - much less go into the hole on fixing a junk computer in the first place.

To make matters worse I'm really kicking myself for being such a clumsy moron. I should be watching the race right now instead of this

.

Mike

Speed · March 17th, 2002, 03:55 PM

Dude, we all make dumb mistakes. I know a guy who got his shirt sleave cought on a CPU fan, his first instinct was just to pull away... and he did, pulling the fan and chipping the CPU at the same time. All of this when all he had to do was unhook whatever his sleave was cought on.

Dont take it too hard. We all make mistakes.

Tazman · March 17th, 2002, 05:16 PM

Thanks Speed

- I tend to be extremley hard on myself.

Well, the drive is toast

. My bad. It seems a waste throwing a new 20GB drive into a PI 100MHz box that has 32MB EDO memory. I tried talking her into buying an new / newer computer but she doesn't want to spend the bucks - funny thing is she uses it as her main computer at her shipping business

.

I believe it's time to get away from it for the day 'fore I become more unglued than I already am.

Mike

Dax_Brandy · March 20th, 2002, 10:04 PM

the drop may have caused misalignment on the read/write mechanism to the disk. in that way, it cannot read or write properly.

i'm sorry for that loss.

NeoStarO1 · March 20th, 2002, 10:16 PM

Tazman, I have an old "new" unused 2 gig maxtor hard drive that I can send your way. PM me if you want it. I feel for you, I know I have made mistakes, don't be hard on yourself. I have accidently fried a old mobo by plugging in the old at power source to the mother board backwards and cooked my old board.

NeoStar

March 20th, 2002, 10:40 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by NeoStarO1
I have accidently fried a old mobo by plugging in the old at power source to the mother board backwards and cooked my old board.
NeoStar

I'll admit to being in that club once

I also wrecked a good board by unplugging and plugging in an AT keyboard when the board was powered - now it just says: Keyboard error - hit F1 to continue

And plugging in a CDROM IDE controller the wrong way round, so I bent the pins and they touched - no more working CDROM

We all make mistakes - then we need to admit 'em and get on with it. IMO.

Tazman · March 21st, 2002, 10:55 AM

NeoStarO1 - thanks for the offer - that was really nice

.

I went to a thrift shop and paid $30 for an PI box that had a 2.5GB drive in it. I pulled the driv and and memory (EDO) and put them in the other box. Wore thing is that I must have 6-7 retired PI and PII systems in the basement at home up north.

My Bad - Doh! I'm over and moved on

.

Mike