How to troubleshoot hard disk failure? Albatron PX845PE Pro II

[skoka]

Hello,



I have the following configuration:



Motherboard : PX845PE Pro II (Silver) R1.02

BIOS Version: Phoenix Award Bios v6.00PG

2 IBM Hard disks ? C: drive with WinXP OS and D: drive for data.



Problem:

During system startup I get an audio message ?Your hard disk may have a problem? and the system would stop at detecting IDE devices. The problem seems to be with the Secondary hard disk (D: drive). When I remove the power supply to the D: drive the system would boot OK. I have set the ?Halt on ? No errors? in the bios option but still the system halts when the D: drive is connected.



I would like the system to continue booting with the C: drive while the problem disk is still connected. Then I would like to see what is wrong with the disk through Norton Disk Doctor in Windows XP. How can I do this?

 

[Buz2b]

Can you get the system to boot to a floppy? If so, and if the disk is "empty", try doing an FDISK and format, or at least see if you can see the drive contents; if any. If you can't access the drive when booting from the floppy then you've got it narrowed down to my second suggestion: hookup problems. It's quite possible that there is something not right in your configuration; IDE cable is bad, not hooked up properly. Or it could be the jumper and/or BIOS settings or IDE port on the MB; lots of "what if's".
Is this an established system that just developed a problem recently or a newly built one that you just added a drive to? I'm not sure why the BIOS is halting the bootup. Usually that will only happen if the boot drive has problems. Have you rechecked your BIOS settings? Is the drive set as the secondary master or is it slaved to the primary drive? If set as secondary Master, try slaving it. If slaved, try setting to secondary master. If/when set to secondary master, on initial boot go into BIOS and turn off (set to "None") the second IDE port and see if the system will boot. If so, reboot, go into BIOS and turn the second IDE port back on (autodetect or manual setup) and see if you can boot then.

 

[skoka]

Buz2b,

This is an established system that I have been using for the last four months. Nothing has changed since then. I had shutdown my PC the last night and the next morning I was having this problem. I have pretty much ruled out problem with IDE cables and power supply.

Both the hard disks are jumpered as cable-select. The C: drive (working drive) is connected to the primary IDE as primary master and D: drive (problem drive) connected as primary slave. The CD Drive is connected to the Secondary IDE. Even if I set the primary slave drive as "none" in the BIOS setup the boot process stops at 'Detecting IDE Drives'. This probably due to the fact that the system needs to detect the C: drive. (Setting the C: drive as manual does not help either).

I have connected the problem disk to the Secondary IDE and the C: Drive to the Primary IDE. Set the Secondary IDE to none. Now the system boots to XP but I do not see the drive in "My Computer". Norton Disk Doctor does not show up the disk either.

Any suggestions? Any utilities that I could try to find out what the problem could be?

 

[Buz2b]

Maybe you tried this but when you have the problem drive on the secondary IDE, did you try booting without turning off (set to none) the secondary IDE? You could also try putting it as a slave to the secondary master CD? You might also want to take the time to physically inspect the problem drive. Make sure the pins are intact and the jumper is in place for whatever is appropriate as to it's position. I doubt you will find anything but it will just eliminate more items from the list. Have you tried
Not aware of any utilities to assist in this but did you try to access it from a boot floppy (booting to dos)? Other than that, the only other thing I could suggest would be to try the drive in a different system; friend or family memebers.