(unusable) Crashed HDD!!! - Tech Support Forums

FunkyM · December 5th, 2002, 07:27 PM

I have this clients HDD it was running that I think must have tangoed with a virus. It was running WIN98SE and now won't boot.

I stuck in a boot disk and I can bring up C:\ but the only files on the drive seem to be the ones that the boot disk loaded on.

Also when the boot disk is going through it's paces it doesn't recognise the partition.

I tried to put it in my machine as a slave but my PC wouldn't recognise it in BIOS and it caused my PC not to boot. My PC has a 80pin IDE cable. So I stuck it in another older machine with a 40pin IDE cable and it recognised it in BIOS but when I tried to boot I got the same problem the PC wouldn't boot.

I then tried to put it on the Seconday IDE as a master and that didn't work either.

I next tried to fdisk /mbr under dos but I got the error

no fixed disks present

you get the same error with plain old fdisk to.

Finally I tried to format it but go the error

Format not supported on drive C:

This is a pain in the neck and I really need help with this one

Regards

Funky

FunkyM · December 5th, 2002, 07:38 PM

Comon guys get ya thinking caps on this one is a doozie!

For me it's hard but maybe simple for one of you.

Bovon · December 5th, 2002, 07:47 PM

What you may try (again) is to have it recognized by some bios...you mentioned it would not work in your machine with an 80 pin cable...its actually a 40 pin header, with an 80 wire cable...40 of those wires are grounds inbetween the signal wires, so an 80 wire cable will work in place of a 40 wire ribbon.

I presume you had the drive correctly jumpered...as a slave when you had it in your machine...if you were running it on the same ribbon cable that you run your master on. Anyway, if you can get any bios to recognise the drive, fdisk and format it right then...the reason you are getting the error "no fixed disks present" is because bios has not recognised the drive...so, for all practical purposes, there is no hard drive attached...and that will continue until you find a way to get a bios in some machine to see it.

If it did tangle with a virus, you may need to zero the drive..I think there is a utility called zap, or something simular that will write all 0s and 1s to the drive, which will overwrite anything else that is there..a virus included. A format will not completely get rid of some viruses.

FunkyM · December 5th, 2002, 07:51 PM

I was getting the NO FIXED DISKS PRESENT error on the original machine.

and in my pc the jumpers were set correctly.

also if i do use software to write all 0's and 1's to the HDD can I still use data recovery software to recover lost data?

Funky

Tomteriffic · December 5th, 2002, 07:52 PM

Funky, is the drive spinning up? Oh, and what make/model of drive.?

The two offhand suggestions I could make would be to give Partition Magic a go, and to try any manufacturer's HDD tools to get something out of it. For example, WD has a utility on their Data Lifeguard disk that will allow you to write zeroes all over the drive, which might kick out any virus on there.

Really, though, it sounds like a case of bad timing, that the drive just decided to croak during the time that you were working on it. Could be the mechanism, but if it's spinning up, morelikely the firmware on the bottom of the drive. In that event, there's a chance that, if you can find the exact same drive with the exact same firmware revision (it'll be printed on the circuit board or on one of the chips themselves), you can do a swap and get it running.

Edit: you got in there while I was writing this. Nope, if you write zeroes to the drive, it's wiped. No recovery possible by mere mortals.

FunkyM · December 5th, 2002, 07:58 PM

it fires up OK I'll give partition magic a go.

It's a FUJITSU MPG3102AT - E

neodave · December 5th, 2002, 08:04 PM

Don't suppose you have a Linux CD laying around. I've had this happen a couple times and ended up setting the bios to boot from Linux Mandrake CD. I'm sure there is a rational explanation to why it happens but that is how I cure it.

FunkyM · December 5th, 2002, 08:08 PM

thanks to all for your help. I hope I can save the data as the drongos that own the HDD don't backup!

Bovon · December 5th, 2002, 08:08 PM

Hmmm...well, I do wish you well. I don't know what to say about the 'no fixed disks present deal'...that does sound like the drive died.

Something (simular?) has happened to my g-neice's machine, it boots just so far, and gets an error that no system disk found, or something simular...maybe no boot disk, ect...whatever, its there and is recognized in bios...you can boot to an A: prompt, change to a C: prompt, do a DIR and see all of the directorys ect...it just dosn't boot. I suspect a virus has gotten to her drive, so she is shipping the drive to me to see if I can get it going again..

FunkyM · December 5th, 2002, 08:13 PM

This is the worst problem I have encountered yet on a HDD I have never had one that I couldn't recovery data off. This will be the first dead drive if I can't get it going.

Funky