Old HD trashed new? Unbootable...

[DrLittleJon]

Folks--
This morning I tried hooking up an old drive (Quantum 200-some MB) to my DMA66 for a backup without success. BIOS found it on some configurations (mixing up master/slave, primary/secondary). Eventually I gave up. BUT now my 8GB UDMA66 (IBM Deskstar, I think) drive seems unbootable. BIOS recognizes it on boot, along with all my secondary CDs and ZIP, slaves, etc., but the system stops right after the "Verifying DMI..." message (just as Win98 takes over, methinks). Booted with startup disk, and ran scandisk which found my media byte(?) missing and repaired it (supposedly), also some corrupt files, dir, replaced a copy of the FAT; very surprising but supposedly repairable stuff. Anyway, all that done, but still no go. Scandisk no longer reports any errors, but system still won't proceed past DMI, with or without the slaves and secondaries. Fdisk shows fine. I can access the drive fine if I boot to A, read and delete files, access all partitions, but I can't boot to it. Also, coincidentally, BIOS no longer tests my RAM, just reports size on startup. Are these linked?
Running Win98SE, Award BIOS ('bout a year old) which I reset via jumper too. Home-built PIII 600 system, no overclocking, nothing special, 128 MB RAM (2 DIMMS I think).
What did I do? Where should I start? Was this just a horrible coincidence, or did the old drive...? BTW, old drive works fine, I hooked it up to a Pentium 120 for the backup while scandisk was chugging away on my P3.
Thanks!

 

[michec]

What motherboard are you using? Are you using an on-board U66 card or an add-in card? If you're using a Promise card or chipset, they have a section on their website for troubleshooting. Here's something that might help:

Problem: My existing HDD will not boot when connected to the Ultra66.
Cause: HDD Hard Disk Drive not booting, MBR, Master Boot Record, FDISK, Geometry Issues

Solution: Will the system boot from a floppy? If so: Can you access the HDD? Can you run programs from the HDD? Can you copy files to and from the HDD? If the answers to all the above questions are, "yes," the MBR on the HDD is unreadable for some reason. Here is how to reset it. (NOTE: While this shouldn't cause any problems, there is a possibility of data corruption. Make sure you have any important data backed up.) - Boot the system from a floppy. - Type "FDISK /MBR" at the command prompt. - Type "SYS C:" at the command prompt. If that doesn't help, or you answered "no" to any of the questions above, the problem is that the Ultra66 cannot properly recognize the format of the HDD. This is due to a slight difference between the LBA translation of your motherboard and that of our card. The only way you will be able to get around it is to repartition/reformat your HDD while it is connected to the Ultra66.


The memory not counting during cold boot could be because you reset the CMOS jumper. Perhaps default setting is to not do a mem test? Also, when you added in the smaller drive earlier and auto-detected it in CMOS, did you choose LBA (which pretty much all drives use nowadays) or CHS? An older 200MB drive would be using CHS translation.

 

[DrLittleJon]

<< What motherboard are you using? Are you using an on-board U66 card or an add-in card? >>



I can't tell you off-hand; I had to come to work to get on the internet, but its an onboard controller, not Promise. If I don't work this out, I'll post that info too. But the answer to all the questions is yes. I'll try that suggestion when I get home. What does the /mbr do? Clear the MBR?



<< Also, when you added in the smaller drive earlier and auto-detected it in CMOS, did you choose LBA (which pretty much all drives use nowadays) or CHS? An older 200MB drive would be using CHS translation. >>



I just let it autodetect at POST; I didn't go into the CMOS. Do you think the old drive popping up as master may have reset it back to CHS and I may need to just try setting it back to LBA (if I can)? Would that explain the new corruption on my HD (files, dirs, FAT)?
Thanks again.

 

[michec]

Typically when you add a new HDD to a system, you need to use the &quot;IDE Hard Disk Detection&quot; in the BIOS/CMOS before you can use the HDD.

The typical key to get into BIOS/CMOS during bootup is &quot;DEL&quot;. Once inside, a menu appears. Go into &quot;IDE Hard Disk Detection&quot;. The HD characteristics pop up and you have to choose 1 of 3 different types of translation: LBA, Large, or Normal. Press the corresponding number to select which type of translation you want to use. LBA (choice '2') is used by pretty much all newer HDDs. Normal (choice '1') is used by older HDDs. I think any HDD under 528MB used normal translation. Depending on what translation you use, the actual size of the HDD may vary slightly.

Perhaps the newer motherboards auto-detect the HDD settings without having to go into BIOS/CMOS. I know that with my MSI BX Master at home, I need to auto-detect settings whenever I add or remove a HDD, otherwise I will get an error during bootup. It seems like your motherboard auto-detected your older HDD w/o having to go into BIOS/CMOS, but it's possible it may have chosen LBA translation for it instead of normal. That may be why you couldn't access it. I don't know if that would cause any problems with your primary HDD though.

Also, &quot;fdisk /mbr&quot; rebuilds your master boot record.

 

[DrLittleJon]

It was the MBR. Fdisk with the switch + sys c: took care of it with no unpleasant side effects, besides the corruption that scandisk had picked up and repaired before.
Thanks! You saved me a ton of time and trouble.