Strange Problem with Hard Drive

marketsons1985

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Apr 15, 2000
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Looking at a computer for a professor of mine, he said it stopped working just suddenly. It's an HP Slimline S7000. Powered it on here, and won't go past HP's boot screen, and won't enter BIOS setup when I prompt it to (or atleast, not within 10 minutes of first starting).

When the drive is taken out, it enters setup just fine. So I figure, bad drive, right?

I plug the drive into my desktop with an external SATA --> USB adapter I have, and it powers on, and shows up as an additional hard drive, JUST FINE. I can browse all the files, and even see the recovery partition.

What is the matter with this drive? Is it on the fritz and about to go? Is the boot sector messed up (but why would BIOS Setup not work well then?)

I thought this would be an easy hard drive swap and replace OS, but now I'm not so sure.

Thanks!
 

skulkingghost

Golden Member
Jan 4, 2006
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Ive seen this before with a bad MBR, backup his files, then format the drive in another pc, plug back in and you should be fine.
 

marketsons1985

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Apr 15, 2000
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Originally posted by: skulkingghost
Ive seen this before with a bad MBR, backup his files, then format the drive in another pc, plug back in and you should be fine.

Hmm. So then just reinstall w/OS CD? Not as easy as copying the files back over, right?
 

skulkingghost

Golden Member
Jan 4, 2006
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You can copy the my documents / videos / pictures, but I would do a complete format of the hard drive, not a quick format either, just to be sure, it sounds to me like the Master Boot Record got corrupt in a bad way.
 

marketsons1985

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Apr 15, 2000
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Alright, so I wiped it with a full format through disk administration, plugged it back in and....nothing. Still same problems. Though, I did only wipe the main partition, and not the recovery partition. Would this be a problem?

To confirm it wasn't a mainboard problem, I did plug in another HDD of mine and there were no problems.

Otherwise it looks like I'm gonna have to go the new hard drive route..
 

skulkingghost

Golden Member
Jan 4, 2006
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I would delete both partitions and do a complete FAT32 format no quick format. I have seen this happen before with flash drives even, where I messed up a bootable flash drive and it wouldnt allow the pc past the bios.