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"Kill Disk" killed my disk! :)

S

Streckfus

Member
I've got WinXP installed on a new Seagate 120GB IDE hard drive, no problems. I used Active@ Kill Disk to wipe out a WD 120GB IDE hard that was in my old computer. And now, when I connect it to the slave on the primary IDE cable, I always get a boot error and my system restarts. If I leave it unplugged until Windows is loaded and THEN hook it up, I get a blue screen of death and I must restart. And when I attempt to configure it in BIOS, my BIOS doesn't recognize the HD as being attached.

I realize that I need to partition/format the drive before it can be used in Windows, but I'm unable to get that far because BIOS doesn't see it, and I can't boot past BIOS without getting a fail.

I've got the A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo. Any ideas?
 
Originally posted by: Streckfus
If I leave it unplugged until Windows is loaded and THEN hook it up, I get a blue screen of death and I must restart.
Click to expand...

So you actually physically hook up an IDE device to a running computer?
 
Just be lucky you didnt blow anything more than the HDD

DONT EVER hook things up to a running PC except PNP devices such as USB devices....
 
Originally posted by: Phil
Originally posted by: Streckfus
If I leave it unplugged until Windows is loaded and THEN hook it up, I get a blue screen of death and I must restart.
Click to expand...

What are you, some kinda retard?
Click to expand...

Wow. I thought everyone knew the difference between USB and UDMA. You know...one being designed to be hot-swappable, the other not. Rule of thumb...don't plug stuff inside of the computer in while the power is already on!

:Q

Edit: Sorry my post sounded redundant. I guess I should type faster. 😉
 
You are lucky you didn't damage your motherboard, or even zap yourself...your plugging in the drive while the PC was running probably destroyed the drive..
 
Thank you so much for all of the retard comments. That's really helping me fix the machine.

Yeah, I'm aware that plugging the thing in probably wasn't the best move, but nothing else was working. And for the record, the retard maneuver was the last thing I tried. I had tried to trouble shoot it up to that point. Boot errors, not showing up in BIOS, etc etc. The HD was sitting there like a bump on a log long before I turned into Mr. DipS#!t and plugged it in while the PC was running. So even if I DID fry the hard drive by being a complete boob, that doesn't explain why it was FUBAR to begin with.

So if you guys want to keep this thing going and call me some more names, that would be a lot of fun. Hell, it's my first build, I'm still learning, I can take it. But if any of you would actually like to help me, that would be even better.
 
did you try the drive in another machine at all? if not then its hard to say what was wrong, but now you most likely need a hard drive and a new motherboard, most likely the ide controller on your motherboard is now destroyed....try another drive on that controler and see if it is recognized, if it is and the controller works, consider yourself extremely lucky!
 
Originally posted by: Streckfus
Thank you so much for all of the retard comments. That's really helping me fix the machine.

Yeah, I'm aware that plugging the thing in probably wasn't the best move, but nothing else was working. And for the record, the retard maneuver was the last thing I tried. I had tried to trouble shoot it up to that point. Boot errors, not showing up in BIOS, etc etc. The HD was sitting there like a bump on a log long before I turned into Mr. DipS#!t and plugged it in while the PC was running. So even if I DID fry the hard drive by being a complete boob, that doesn't explain why it was FUBAR to begin with.

So if you guys want to keep this thing going and call me some more names, that would be a lot of fun. Hell, it's my first build, I'm still learning, I can take it. But if any of you would actually like to help me, that would be even better.
Click to expand...

As a wize man once said....

Stupid is what stupid does.
 
Have you set the jumpers on the drive? Will this drive be a slave? Some boards are finicky about Master drives being on the end of the ribbon and slaves being on the middle plug.
 
Originally posted by: Phil
Originally posted by: Streckfus
If I leave it unplugged until Windows is loaded and THEN hook it up, I get a blue screen of death and I must restart.
Click to expand...

What are you, some kinda retard?
Click to expand...

Perhaps the title of this thread should read, "I killed my Disk!"?
 
Thanks to the few of you that are trying to help.

My IDE controller is fine because my system drive is working - system drive is master and the erased data drive is slave. The jumpers are correct as well, I checked that before I installed the drive.

I suppose I could swap out a different IDE cable; maybe the slave connector on the cable is bad. But I don't think it's the cable/controller as a result of my stupidity - because as I said the BIOS wasn't recognizing the presence of the drive from the start. The drive worked fine in my other computer. Then I wiped it with the software app and put it in the new system - hoping to format/partition from there on.
 
If you can boot to DOS from a floppy drive, grab a copy of PartitionMagic, make a set of recovery disks, boot them up and see if they can find the drive. If so, you can then partition and format the drive.
 
If you have another machine you can use, I'd move the disk to that machine. Then you can figure out for sure if the drive is bad.

I'd also connect a working drive to your IDE connector to see if it is OK.

Best of luck!
 
WD drives don't like to run with others. Try it as master on the first ide cable without any other drives on the cable. Sometimes you need to set them as cable select. Have read a couple threads where peeps had to remove the jumpers as well.

Good luck
 
Thanks for the help, guys. I'll probably give Partition Magic a try. Otherwise I can always pick up an OEM drive for a decent price. I don't think I'm going to use Kill Disk again.....
 
Have you tried the drive in the other PC again since the plugging it in while PC running incident? Also, did you try it on the other IDE channel(unplug your CD-Rom drive, and put the questionable hard drive in it's place). As somebody else said, western digitals are pretty picky about jumper settings, so did you try setting both the western digital, and the seagate to cable select?
 
I think the first thing that I'd try is to disconnect the other HD and boot to a floppy or CD and try to format from there. It is not good to plug in etc., but it does not mean that it's automatic that something was destroyed....I know.
 
Reverse the flow on the flux capacitor.

In seriousness, others have already said it right: troubleshoot first. Connect the drive to a known good machine and see if it functions. Do the same with the IDE cable to ensure the cable isn't damaged.

If both of those check out, the problem is likely with the motherboard and could be either of the following parts, among others:

corrupt BIOS - Clear the CMOS (see motherboard user manual)
Blown IDE controller - unlikely, but possible
 
I had this same problem with my friend's hard drive. He had some of my other friends look at it first and they couldn't get it recognized by their computers.

I looked at it and it turns out one of them had messed up 2 of the IDE pins so bad that they were bent and pushed in. I had to use my pliers to straighten them out and pull them out so they were the same height as the other pins. After I did that, it was working fine.

Just something you might wanna check out since it's not a very obvious problem.
 
Don't feel too bad about the retard thing. I use mobile trays a lot and have hot plugged ide drives in many times by accident and have yet to fry one, just really lucky I guess.

Download datalifeguard tools from wd website. Make a floppy bootdisk from that. Install the drive alone as a single (no jumpers) on the ide cable that worked with your working drive in the working computer. and boot from wd floppy, run the diagnostics, write zeros, format etc. You might have to fool with the bios settings so it will be reckognized.
I have had problems with sp2 reckognizing additional drives and reverting to sp1 fixes it. Haven't figured out why yet.

Yanagi is a little confused: PnP by no means is the same as hot swappable.

 
Thanks to all of you that actually bothered to help! I double checked the drive and re-arranged the jumper settings on the drives (one was set to cable select the other was set to slave) - and bam, PC booted without a fail. Windows recognized the drive in the Disk Management screen and it's being formatted now. It's Alive!!
 
oh screw the retard comments... I unplug and plug things just for the heck of it... just three days ago, I was hotswapping one of my SATA and blew one (SATA can be hotswapped) ... big deal! Don't be so scared to touch your components. (long time ago, when I was a kid, I was wearing rubber soles and rubber gloves, while checking to see if the IDE was firmly in place... now I rub my hands on my silk shirt, then I push it down with my thumb, while rubbing my wool socks on the carpet.... welcome to the world of RMAs....)

anyhow.. from my countless experiences with harddrive failures, since I own like 18... from my precious 2gb IBM (now a collector's item) to 250gb SATAs..

I think there are three possiblities here.

1. Your physical disk is screwed up aka the mechancial parts that make up your disk (in this case, you can't really fix anything or recover any. Although in the past, I voided my warranty, but actually cracked opened my problematic HD and replaced some parts with the same model components... and it worked! and I got my files back.. but I don't recommend this.. unless you know what you are doing) When your physical disk is screwed. Some mobos will not recognize, but some will. I found that SCSI controllers via PCI can sometimes recognize the drive better than mobos.. so try it, if you have one of those cards.

2. Your controller card is burned out or screwed (this is fairly easy to fix. all you need is an identical harddrive... replace the controller cards and boot, and voila! there are your files again. Back it up. Remember to put the controller card back to its original owner and RMA the whacked one.

3. Jumper/Cable/Mobo/Any Other problems not listed.... This is easy to test. Just take the HD to another computer, set it to master in secondary IDE and plug it in (after taking the secondary IDE part first of course)... If it doesn't work then your problem is either 1 or 2.

BTW, if you decide to go with route 1, because those files are so sensitive... there is nothing like recoverying your precious data from supposedly dead and fried HD... wow! it's feels really really good.
 
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