Computer boots up, but says there is a error in the hard disk...

[LiquidImpulse]

is it a 100% defective hard drive? or could there be other possibilities? before this happened, one of the hard drives was known to have worked/had an OS loaded onto it. There are 2 ide drives, one set as master and the other slave. when i saw that the hard drive had failed to boot, i tried swapping the master/slave ide ribbon cables, but that did not help. So is there any other possibilities as to what is wrong with this?

 

[Severian]

what OS?

what is the exact error message?

 

[cprince]

Backup the data on the drives first, then run diagnostic software on them. Most drive manufacturers have diagnostic software that you can download from their website. DO NOT run the diagnostic software on the drives until you have backed up all your data. This is because the diagnostic software will stress the drive and may cause the already failing drive to fail completely with no way for you to save your data.