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IDE Harddrive makes Windows Sluggish

7earitup

7earitup

Senior member
Hey guys,

So I was over at my in-law's house and as usual, their computer was acting up. So I go over to check it out, and it is at a black screen with just a cursor flashing. I CTRL+ALT+DELETE it and then it restarts. The boot screen takes extra long, then it gives me a "Disk read error" Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to Restart message.

I popped in the Windows XP disk and tried to do a chkdsk, which froze at 0%. So, I decided to bring the HD home with me to see if I could salvage any files off of it and then perhaps format it.

When I plug it up to my XP SP3 system, Windows has random little stuttering issues. The drive is only detected after I scan for it in the device manager, and then once I try to right click on it in My Computer, it freezes my computer and kills off explorer.exe.

What in the world could be the issue with this thing? Is there something I am missing? Is it just plain out fried?

Thanks for any help! You guys are always on the ball! 🙂
 
Yep sounds like the drive is dead. Your system is frezing trying to access it as it is waiting for a responce from teh drive. Something in the drive has failed. Put your hand on the drive when you try to access it and see if you can feel it spinning up.
 
Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
Yep sounds like the drive is dead. Your system is frezing trying to access it as it is waiting for a responce from teh drive. Something in the drive has failed. Put your hand on the drive when you try to access it and see if you can feel it spinning up.
Click to expand...

It doesn't do much of anything to be honest. It drops continuous errors when I try to chkdsk it, and it doesn't spin up to speed like the other drives.

Is it done? 🙁
 
So I suppose there is no way to salvage any data from it on my own, correct? It would have to be sent off to a hard drive restoration company I am assuming.

EDIT: Also, is there any other way to be completely 100% sure that it is fried? Or is it hanging up my windows a pretty sure test?
 
Before you give up, try the freezing method. Double bag it in zip lock bags and freeze it over night. Remove it the next day and hook it up while it's cold.

I was able to recover all my data off a 300gb drive doing this.
 
Originally posted by: jtvang125
Before you give up, try the freezing method. Double bag it in zip lock bags and freeze it over night. Remove it the next day and hook it up while it's cold.

I was able to recover all my data off a 300gb drive doing this.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? haha - I have never heard of this at all.
 
Any other opinions on my situation? Anything else I can do to make sure it is 100% done and nothing can be salvaged from it?
 
Originally posted by: 7earitup
Originally posted by: jtvang125
Before you give up, try the freezing method. Double bag it in zip lock bags and freeze it over night. Remove it the next day and hook it up while it's cold.

I was able to recover all my data off a 300gb drive doing this.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? haha - I have never heard of this at all.
Click to expand...

I've heard of this lots of times. Its definitely worth a shot. If the drive is dead than what can it hurt? The bags are presumably to prevent condensation on the drive.
 
Okay, the drive is in the freezer as I am typing this. I will pull it out tomorrow. Let me ask you guys one more thing..

What should I have the jumper on the back of the drive set to? I have 2 SATA drives so I do not use the IDE interface anymore. The only thing that uses the IDE interface is my DVD burner. If I were to put it in line with that, would I set it to slave, master, cable select, or secondary master? I tried them all, and they all froze my windows, but I was just checking so I could be sure.

Thanks again. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: 7earitup
What should I have the jumper on the back of the drive set to?
Click to expand...
With any recent (past ten years or so) IDE hard drive and IDE drive controller, assuming you are using an 80-conductor cable, the settings are simple. Set ALL drives (both CDROM and hard drives) to "Cable Select (CS)".

Be sure that the BIOS is set to recognize drives on the IDE channels you are using. The safest way is to set all IDE controller channels to "Auto Detect".
 
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Originally posted by: 7earitup
What should I have the jumper on the back of the drive set to?
Click to expand...
With any recent (past ten years or so) IDE hard drive and IDE drive controller, assuming you are using an 80-conductor cable, the settings are simple. Set ALL drives (both CDROM and hard drives) to "Cable Select (CS)".

Be sure that the BIOS is set to recognize drives on the IDE channels you are using. The safest way is to set all IDE controller channels to "Auto Detect".
Click to expand...

Well, the BIOS detected it fine and Windows did too after searching for hardware changes. It just makes Windows crap out when I try to access it. Everything is slower. All I have to do is try to right click the drive in My Computer to bring up properties, and it freezes there.
 
that sucks. sounds like maybe the motor died. usually if the drive is dying its a mechanical failure of some sort. the freezer trick is meant to shrink the metal so the mechanics of the drive can operate properly for a limited time to recover data, but if the drive simply wont spin i guess you are going to have to send it off for recovery. how much data was on the drive, and how big was the drive to begin with? also, how old is it?
 
The freezing trick did not work. The drive is 4 years old, but the computer it was in was not well taken care of. I believe it died due to high fragmentation, viruses, and over heating.

It probably had about 140 GBs out of the 160 GB taken up with random programs and photos. The biggest loss is the photos really, which is all I was going to salvage. However I do not believe they are worth the hefty chunk of cash for the drive to be recovered.
 
yea 4 years under those conditions will definitely bring a platter drive to its knees. one should really upgrade their storage once they get to about 75% capacity on a platter drive, because after that point it will just start shortening the lifespan of the drives significantly. high temps + fragmentation on a really full drive has thus far killed all 4 of my IDE hard drives, im not surprised this one died also.
 
I would try putting the drive back in the pc and booting with the latest Knoppix Live CD (Linux). It will mount alot of drives that Windows will not. you can then use a flash drive to copy off the files you need.

hth
 
Question: Does your XP box where you hooked the HD, do you have the "Smart" feature in your bios? Can you enable that?

I had the EXACT same situation on a friend's computer... it was acting soooo sluggish, everything on XP would freeze. I pulled that drive out and hooked it to my system at home and right away when the SMART feature would read when the system would boot up... it showed all my HD's as fine but that one "failed".

It made my system totally unmanageable by how slow and sluggish it was... that old IDE drive was dead... or close to it. I also tried then the freezer trick and simply could not salvage the data.

Anyhow.... good luck.
 
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