Hard Drive Troubleshooting

[ctbrown]

I've been plagued by freezes and have traced it to one of my non-boot SATA II hardrives (SAMSUNG SpinPoint 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive). So after some trouble shooting I have determined the following:

-With the drive installed the Win-XP takes forever to start and freezed shortly after starting.
-Physically disconecting the the drive restores normal booting and computer operation.
-Its not the cables, I'v already tried swapping these.
-The bios is able to detect the drive

So is this a hardware problem or has it somehow become corrupted? And, most importanty, can I recover the data without spending big $$.

Thanks

 

[Slowlearner]

If the bios recognizes the hd, then

1. Check the files on the hd by booting from a UBCD4Win cd or a Knoppix live CD (Google for them). Backup important files somewhere, easiest if you are on a network.

2. After backing up, run chdsk (under disk tools) in UBCD on the hd to see if that fixes the problem, if chkdsk does not run or reports many errors,

3. Get diagnostics software from Samsung to check the hd - I am not sure if it requires a floppy or you have to burn an iso. The diagnostic software should tell you if the hd is bad.

 

[Laputa]

YHPM!

 

[imported_nocturne]

I had a simlar problem recently when removing my 30gb HD (to keep as a backup) and setting up my 160gb as the master to reinstall xp. For some reason, my 160gb would only work with slave and cable-select jumper settings, and my 30gb only works with master and slave jumper settings (?!?!?!?!?!). Might be worth a shot...