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Hard Drives are out to get me!!!

I

imhotepmp

Golden Member
I recently purchased two hard drives, both WD. And for the past few days been struggling to get these suckers to work.

WD Caviar 21200 1.2gb
1)I just bought this HD from compgeeks, and after plugging it in, i get this message. I have never got this message before, so im at a loss to what it means. Does this mean that the boot sector is corrupt? I did a successful installation of mandrake, but it refuses to boot up for the same reason.
2)Also after installing Linux I put into my win2k machine and after reformatting it shows up as an 18mb disk!!! What happened to the other 1.02gb? I tried reformatting several times, but it was pretty useless.
WD14300 4.3gb msi6182 810 chipset
I got this one from a trader here and this one refuses to be detected by the mobo. I check the jumpers and its on master, but does not show up when the bios check for ide drives. Is this HD a dud as well?? I tried this in a soyo and it did the same thing.

Im about fed up, this is my first experience buying used HD's, and im beginning to think that the few bucks saved isnt worth the hassle. Rather just pay an extra $20 and buy it new. If anyone can help me, that would be great

imhotepmp


 
WD Caviar 21200 1.2gb
1)I just bought this HD from compgeeks, and after plugging it in, i get this message. I have never got this message before, so im at a loss to what it means

What message?
 
As CRV asked, what was the message you got? What filesystem did you use with Win2k? Does the BIOS show the correct size? Does fdisk show the correct size?

The traders here will probably hate me, but I agree about buying HDs new. Too often used HDs have bad sectors that have been covered up by low level formats and such.
 
win2k is fat32
The 4.3gb drive doenst show up in the bios, all it say is "primary Hard Disk Fail" just like the other WD. Im beginning to dislike WD alot!!
😀
 
It think I'm recalling that error correctly. Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong. I believe that is a pretty general message saying that it either didn't find a disk or the disk isn't bootable.

You mention that this is your first time buying used HDs. I assume you have installed drives from scratch many times (You're a senior member here so I assume you are pretty computer literate).

You have partitioned the drives with win2k or linux I assume and set the primary partition active. Then formatted it.

You have two hard drives I am a little unclear as to which drive is getting that error message and which one you are missing space on.

Sorry, I just re-read it. I first though you mistyped 18mb and meant 18GB and it was a larger than that disk. Silly me. It's a 1.2GB disk and showing up as 18MB? Make sure your BIOS is detecting it correctly. On old drives sometimes you have to hard code all the sectors, heads, etc. into the BIOS to get the correct size. I haven't had to do that in years. If your BIOS is detecting the size incorrectly that could explain only the 18MB.
 
For the drive that doesn't show up in the BIOS. With your case open can you hear the drive spin up, does the light on the drive come on (if it has one)?

Have you tried the obvious, reconnecting the power and IDE cables (This is IDE I assume because you are setting it in the BIOS?) making sure pin 1 goes to pin 1 on both ends? Pin 1 on the drive is almost always the side facing the 4 pin power connector. Pin 1 on the cable is the side with the red line. If it is the only drive on the cable it should be plugged into the end connector on the cable and set to master. If there is already a drive on the end set to master, this one should be set to slave. I am sorry if I am going over the basics, but worse case I make myself look like an jerk which I've never had any fear of doing. 🙂
 
The 1.2gb drive is the one which reads 18mb in windows..I will try to manually put in the sectors,cylinders,etc and see what happens
the 4.3g is the drive who refuses to be detected at all. Hope this clears up any confusion

imhotepmp
 
yep, the basics was the first thing i tried(always try the obvious first 🙂 ) Im at a loss at what to do, and im soo close to just opting for someone else to take these off my hands.
appreciate the help dszd0g and crv

imhotepmp
 
Am I looking at this/these problems too simply? Doesn't Primary Hard Disk Fail mean either you haven't identified the drive through the BIOS, or you haven't fdisked he drive, thus no OS (DOS or Win) isn't seeing it?

Most, if not all recent motherboards will automatically detect hard drives. If yours won't then you need to manually input the drive's parameters. Then it's off to fdisk and format.
 


<< I assume you have installed drives from scratch many times (You're a senior member here so I assume you are pretty computer literate). >>



So you're saying Paulson knows how to build HDD's from scratch? 😛 😉
 
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