HDD Troubles, please advise

[monzi]

Alright, so 2 days ago, my video card shat the bed, so I beleive moving the pc around knocked my hdd up or something.

In bios it is displayed at MHXTHR (Maxtor but H's and other chers are replaced instead of the actual full name). The Code number of the drive is 5t040H4 But the H comes up as an @ sign.

I took it to a diff computer, and it works, but will not post boot into it, it just sit's there at the "Master HDD" screen type thing.


I was going to try to find onther HDD of the same model, and replace the plates inside them, and do a make shift data recovery.


What do I do???


-Monzi

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Try this first - 9 times out of 10 it's the problem:

This is often caused just by dirty contacts on the EIDE ribbon cable, the connector on the mobo, or the connector on the drive, or a bad ribbon cable.

Swap out the cable with another one. Insert and remove the cable in the mobo and hard drive connectors a couple of times to clean the contacts.

 

[monzi]

Hey. I dumped the drive into onther box, and it seems to pick it up,

but it wont post into it, nor will a recovery console from xp boot disc read the drive.

It identifies it fine, but just doesnt seam to want to read it. I need to locate myself a new IDE cable, and try it once again before just giving up, or attempting to do a make shift datarecovery.


What else can I try, what about the infa(mouse) zip lock + freezer?
-Monzi

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Before trying the freezer trick I'd definately replace the cable. I would also try downloading the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic and see if it detects it and passes the tests.

Double check the jumpers. Some drives have TWO settings for master: One for single master and one for master with spare. Jumper it wrong and you'll have problems similar to what you're having. You SHOULD jumper it as CS and not as master or slave. Most modern mobos prefer you use CS on all your drives.

If you can't run the diagnostic (or it fails) on 2 different computers using a different ribbon than the one you have now, then it's probaly a bad drive.

The freezer trick won't help - it sounds like you have bad electronics on the HDD, not a mechanical problem.