IBM Hard Drives

[Dragon365]

Is there any way to use the 75gxp hard drive realiably? Mine just crashed AGAIN and I'm stuck using a slow laptop because my darn gateway's motherboard blew an IDE channel when attempting to fix the problem. Can a fan help fix the problem. I hate to throw it away, although smashing it might be fun.

 

[Lucky]

what do you mean "crashed"? Be a bit more specific-what happened and what are the symptoms? And how did the IDE channel "blow"?

 

[Dragon365]

Crashing: I got the evil scratch of death, and using ghost to clone it to a new drive wouldn't help. I'm guessing my system directories got corrupted like last time.

As for the IDE channel, my dad pinched a cable, and we believe that is what caused it. No devices work on it now.

 

[Lucky]

does the drive show up during POST?
Does windows recognize it?
have you run the IBM drive fitness test on it?
and
have you tried a new cable?

 

[Dragon365]

Don't want to reformat it, so I'm not running DFT
Yeah, it shows up during post
New cable doesn't work. Duh, I tried that.
I'll find out if windows recognizes it next week when gateway sends me my new parts.

Edit: the setup I was running is Box 1, incase you were interested.

 

[Lucky]

ah...didnt know you had to reformat to try the fitness test. You learn something every day!

As for the hard drive, I'm sure you've heard of its problems. RMA it (if possible) and get something else. If you can't RMA it throw it on ebay with a disclaimer. It's not worth the trouble IMO, coming from someone who's lost a 75gxp and a 60gxp.

 

[Dragon365]

Yeah, I have known about the problems. My dad got some new 20gb western digitals at work, and I'll be using one of those in the resurrected Box 1. Sweet thing is that I now have a fast cpu/motherboard for a linux test box because gateway is sending me a new one, and i only need two drives for that anyways. I may just sell the current drive and the one gateway is sending me to some unsuspecting friends .

 

[meefmah]

There is no need to reformat a drive in order to run DriveFitnessTest. Load it on a Floppy and boot to DOS. Select the read only tests(analysis) not the overwrites(restore). Sell the replacement(120GXP?) and toss the original, if Gateway doesn't need it. BTW, you should Ghost the drive before it fails.

 

[Dragon365]

I didn't have anything big enough to ghost it to, the next biggest hard drive in the house is only 4.3gb(!)
I didn't know about that read-only test, thanks!

 

[Jmmsbnd007]

You don't have to reformat to use the fitness test...
If all else fails, freeze it, or drop it/hit it from 6 inches a few times, seriously.