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dead hard drives?

I have some old hard drives.. when I put them in a computer, they get recognized/identified, but then I get a master hard drive failure message or something like that. Are they dead or is it possibly some error I'm doing?
 
does it say disk error or something? I think you get an error message if there's no OS or the HD isn't bootable, so put in a boot disk and it should work
 
It sounds like what you're getting is 'Primary Master Hard Disk Failure' or something along those lines.

If you get this message, it could be one of 2 things;

A) The settings that your BIOS has detected from the drive, are actually incorrect. Try manually putting in the cyl/heads/spt, and see if that makes a difference. You can usually find these settings on the label on the top of the drive.

B) The BIOS can read the drives Firmware, and can therefore see the required settings, but cannot complete the POST because it can't read from the first sector of the drive - indicating a faulty drive.


I would recommend getting the Ontrack disk manager for your drive - it can report the drive settings independent of what the BIOS sees.
Not only is this useful for getting the right drive settings, but it can also test the drive, and then you'll know if it's faulty or not.
Disk manager is not free, but if you goto google.com and search for it by manufacturer (eg: 'Fujitsu Disk Manager'), you can find the freely available mfg-specific version.

Good Luck!
 
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