www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Hi all,
hard drive on the old poota developed the click of death...
got another off a mate but it didnt recognise it until the jumper was set to 'slave'... only hard drive in the machine...
so i get the bios to find it, it registers its size but nothing on the heads or cylinders...
i was expecting it to have something on it at least but am i correct in thinking what ive got is basically a brand new hard drive, unformatted...
it does absolutely nothing on boot up, no 'disk error's, nothing, just a flat cursor...
do i need to get hold of a windows disk to reformat and install windows?
or is the drive shafted?
thaks for any help, last time i did this was on a 486dx66

can you see the disk in 'my computer'?

If your old HD is Kaput then parts of this may help:
http://www.pcmech.com/article/installin ... p-by-step/

dave

i doesnt boot alun....

dave, i butchered the old drive before i realised its not really a good idea taking em apart - clean rooms etc... even put it in the oven see if it could move it enough to read the first track.. (read up a bit, then butchered it anyway)

anyway, is this what happens when you bung in a new drive? im guessing i need a boot disk, havent got one but i could make one but it doesnt even register the number of cylinders or heads in the bios..
cant get it to recognise its existence when the jumper is set to 'master'..

only works as a slave so i set the bios to look for a boot record on this drive and all it does is verify the ram then nothing... not even a blue screen, just.. nothing...

What type is the HDD that you got from your mate, because your motherboard may not support that type.

Have you got details of your computer and of the motherboard to see what type of HDD it supports.
And also the details of the HDD that you are fitting.
Have you still got the old one because it would be handy to know the details of that too.

Is the MB IDE or SATA connections?

dave

AH.

Could the drive just be incompatible, even though it's the right connection, Eg. IDE Sata etc.

Eg. the speed of the hard drive may be faster than what your motherboard can handle?

I had a problem like this years ago, but I cannot remember how I got around it.

but yeah, a boot cd/windows cd would be a good starting point me thinks.

errrr whoooosh?

all i know is the hdd is a maxon 20gb.. cant find anything on it really cept loads of serial numbers and the thing that tells you how to change the jumpers..


the pc is a compact prosignia desktop of some age with a pIII 500 chip..
in the bios theres different settings fordifferent types of hard drive and speed theres like 1 pio 10, an ultra dma amd something beginning with e - is this the right sort of thing your on about?

i dont know if the hdd is lank or not cos its sort of 'third' hand really (not knock off, just given to a mate who gave it to me..)

the old one is an 'enhanced ide hard drive' wd100 - western digital 10gb gives drive parameters: LBA 19541088?
pulling the new one out now...

new one is a maxtor d740-x AT? no idea whether its ide or sata or ?
just lots of serial numbers and other incomprehensible stuff?

found this - http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardwar ... 22052.html

this is exactly the problem.. would it be common?

dunno what the AT means but it does have the 6L too..

IDE is a long plug with a wide cable (unless you've got the thing one's - I doubt)

SATA eSATA etc is a different plug type so you'd know if you had one.

If it's same plug as you're old one it's IDE.

yeh it is, fits just like the old one, same power cable too nice one..

is this what a blank hard drive does then? will just bunging a windows cd in first set it all up or do i need some sort of formatting disk first?

You should be able to just set it as a slave and the system should read it.

As I said, there's something i'm not quite remembering with the problem I had and how I got around it. It was something simple.

But yeah, you could try a windows disk.

Just go to BIOS and change the boot option to CD ROM

and when the disk is in, it'll say 'boot from cd rom press any key now'

So do that, then a blue screen will appear and just let it do its thing.

From here it'll show you the disks, or at least it should.

You would want to select the right disk. Check those long numbers on them they should help you identify it.

AJGSHSNDFKSAKDD bla bla

and it's size, of course.

Then partition it. and from there format it. NTFS is a safer formatting option for security but doesn't run as fast.

FAT 32 is faster for an older system.

thanks alun, ill have an ask around and see whos got one..
cheers mate

just had a thought...

is it possible to stick the hdd in another pc and copy the entire contents of one hdd onto another? would this actually work? thereby making a sort of 'clone'?