Hard disk fail message.

[Nickyct]

During installing Windows XP my cd was probably bad and it stop at 14%. I cleaned the disk put it in and got the same problem so I exited it. Now when I boot up it keeps telling me that Primary hard disk fail. I went into bios and it's there (not the right capacity though). I plugged into my system and I got the same message hoping that partition magic will fix it. Got the same hard disk fail message. I hit F1 to continue and it doesn't show up anywhere under partition magic. I know the cable is not bad because it shows up in Bios.
The hard drive is Maxtor 30 gig and it's about a year old.
Help me.

Thanks

 

[Finnkc]

try going into DOS and doing the

format c:

and clean the drive again if you can do that.

Then make sure your all pluged in ok with the IDEs and make sure you check to see if BIOS can detect your drive.

 

[Nickyct]

During Boot up it will stop at detection IDE. When I go to Bios it recognizes it.

 

[newbiepcuser]

Try downloading Maxtor's disk utility off their web site to verify if the hard drive has failed. Your hard drive might be under warranty still.


It does sound like your hard drive has failed.

 

[Pothead]

Since it is a year old, you prolly have a 3 yr warranty on it unlike the newer Maxtors. I've had 4 of 5, all brand new, Maxtor 80gb die on me in the past 6 months, not fun. Mostly a heating issue with me though.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: newbiepcuser
Try downloading Maxtor's disk utility off their web site to verify if the hard drive has failed. Your hard drive might be under warranty still.


It does sound like your hard drive has failed.

Yeah; the error you mention is likely the drive's SMART (Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology) detecting an internal problem, and warning you about it so you have some chance of getting important stuff off of it. Too often though, the SMART doesn't even see a problem until it's already happening. But if you are "fortunate" enough to get the warning before the drive outright flips over and dies, you at least get a chance to recover your data off of it, and maybe even thoroughly wipe the contents before sending it back for RMA.

 

[StraightPipe]

get PowerMax disc utilitie off maxttor website

 

[440BX]

Dont pack your harddrives on top of each other,they are very hot and need to breath..If its cool enough a harddrive will not fail for the life of a comp,at least 10 years.

 

[Nickyct]

Thanks for all your suggestions. Will try every possible way to try to make it work. I just have so little time to work on it right now. Keep it coming though.

 

[Viper96720]

Get maxtors drive utility and format the drive. Cousin had a drive we thought was bad. Ended up being a faulty power supply.

 

[Nickyct]

I tried power Max from Maxtor site. NO LUCK. Still getting error. I think I got error code s57.
I don't know if the drive is really dead. But I don't understand my Bios still detect it though.

 

[StraightPipe]

when you ran powermax, did it detect any problems? did you attempt to repair?

 

[Nickyct]

Yes, I tried to repair it and when I try to do low level formatting it just won't do it because of the error.