Dead Men Walking

dMw Chit Chat => The Beer Bar => Technology Section => Topic started by: Sn00ks on February 02, 2010, 12:01:56 PM

Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Sn00ks on February 02, 2010, 12:01:56 PM
I powered up my PC after returing from holiday it didn't work. It can't see the HDD. It is a Seagate Barracuda 7200 1TB. I bought in on the 24/10/2008.
I can hear and feel that the disk is spinning up and what sounds like the heads moving, but the drive is not seen during POST and the system thinks there isn't one. :crying:
 
I've contacted OverClockers about it and am awaiting their response but in the meantime I thought I'd ask if anyone here had any ideas? Or do I just need to get a new drive and rebuild? Last backup was in October :sad:
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: kregoron on February 02, 2010, 12:04:05 PM
sounds odd that it isnt visible, but then again if the PCB is dead, it wouldnt.. do you have S.M.A.R.T enabled?
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Sn00ks on February 02, 2010, 12:13:23 PM
Nope didn't have SMART installed.
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: kregoron on February 02, 2010, 12:41:36 PM
you could try enabling SMART and plugging in the disk again, might even just be dust in the cable connectors or whatever, or try swapping ports on the motherboard..
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Jabbs on February 02, 2010, 12:58:54 PM
Might be worth trying a HDD diagnostics tool to see what comes up.  There might be s Seagate tool for the purpose.

You might want to chuck the drive in another pc and run chkdsk too
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Sn00ks on February 02, 2010, 01:08:15 PM
Quote from: kregoron;303143you could try enabling SMART and plugging in the disk again, might even just be dust in the cable connectors or whatever, or try swapping ports on the motherboard..

Is SMART a BIOS thing on the mobo? I thought it was something you had to buy and have running on the PC?
 
How can an HDD diagnostic tool work if the disk isn't visible?
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: kregoron on February 02, 2010, 01:19:56 PM
Quote from: Jabbs;303146Might be worth trying a HDD diagnostics tool to see what comes up.  There might be s Seagate tool for the purpose.

You might want to chuck the drive in another pc and run chkdsk too

its kinda difficult to do with the drive not being detected by the bios ;)
But seagates own diagnostics might be able to do so.


Ye S.M.A.R.T is enable in your bios, Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology
 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.) With missing drives SMART can sometimes show the cause of it missing or being left out in the POST.
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Jabbs on February 02, 2010, 09:32:27 PM
Quote from: kregoron;303151its kinda difficult to do with the drive not being detected by the bios ;)
But seagates own diagnostics might be able to do so.


Yeah, what that Jabbs guy said ;-)
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Sn00ks on February 03, 2010, 10:09:48 AM
I tried Seatools in DOS from a bootable CD and nix. Couldn't get past the load screen where you click on 'I agree'. Mouse and keyboard unresponsive, tried with PS2 bits too. Did notice that there was no disks showing in the background.
Also tried the disk on a different SATA cable and connector, still nada.
 
RMA'ing it back to Seagate.
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: delanvital on February 03, 2010, 12:48:36 PM
Quote from: Sn00ks;303230I tried Seatools in DOS from a bootable CD and nix. Couldn't get past the load screen where you click on 'I agree'. Mouse and keyboard unresponsive, tried with PS2 bits too. Did notice that there was no disks showing in the background.
Also tried the disk on a different SATA cable and connector, still nada.
 
RMA'ing it back to Seagate.

Do you happen to have another PC to give it a whirl in? And have you tried another cable and/or SATA-port?
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Sn00ks on February 03, 2010, 01:55:14 PM
Quote from: delanvital;303235Do you happen to have another PC to give it a whirl in? And have you tried another cable and/or SATA-port?

Yup, yup and yup and no, no and no was the result :sad:
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Sn00ks on February 04, 2010, 10:32:47 PM
Well the replacment disk is due to arrive tomorrow.
The rebuild starts here.
So should I set the disk to ahcp (or somthing like that) before I start the install?
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: kregoron on February 04, 2010, 11:08:27 PM
AHCI?

AHCI is required for NCQ and such other awsome features and is enabled in BIOS ;)

and yes its a good idea to set it for AHCI before installing windows, as windows gets silly if you change it after, tho there is a fix to change it when windows is installed
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Dingo on February 05, 2010, 01:59:24 AM
The disk is not dead, it's just sleeping......:D
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Sn00ks on February 05, 2010, 03:13:30 PM
Looking at the Gigabyte site, which is what my mobo is, I notice that there is a SATA2 AHCI/RAID driver. To install it I need to interrupt the Windows install and load the driver from a floppy. I don't have a floppy! (drive that is)
 
As Windows 7 is supposed to support AHCI do I need to install the Gigabyte drivers?
 
Or do I just not bother with AHCI and leave it as is?
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: BrotherTobious on February 05, 2010, 03:21:43 PM
you should be able to use a USB pen as well mate.
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: kregoron on February 05, 2010, 04:39:58 PM
Quote from: Sn00ks;303377Looking at the Gigabyte site, which is what my mobo is, I notice that there is a SATA2 AHCI/RAID driver. To install it I need to interrupt the Windows install and load the driver from a floppy. I don't have a floppy! (drive that is)
 
As Windows 7 is supposed to support AHCI do I need to install the Gigabyte drivers?
 
Or do I just not bother with AHCI and leave it as is?
windows 7 does natively support ACHI so drivers should not be needed...
just remember that you cant change to ACHI mode once windows is installed unless you follow the guide i posted ->here<- (http://techyduck.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-enable-ahci-on-windows-7.html)

well if disk is a somewhat new model, i strongly suggest you enable ACHI for NCQ and alike.. increased my drives performance by around 10% and more when multitasking
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Snokio on February 05, 2010, 06:22:30 PM
If your raiding them, there should be a Intel raid controller on the MB as well as the gigabyte one (as I have) but I use the Intel one as I can't see much benefit using Gigabytes :g: (Nothing that stood out to me anyway) and you don't need to mess around with drivers as W7 will pick it up automatically..........I say all this but by now you have probably already got it all installed :rolleyes:
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: kregoron on February 05, 2010, 10:25:38 PM
as hes never mentioned more then one HDD id never had my thoughts on raid, but then again ACHI is automaticly enabled when raid is selected on nearly all raid controllers :P
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: Sn00ks on February 06, 2010, 11:35:23 AM
:ranting2: disk still not arrived. Supposed to have been dispatched on the 4th.:ranting2:
GRRRRRRRRRR
Title: HDD dead!
Post by: OldBloke on February 06, 2010, 11:57:06 AM
Quote from: Sn00ks;303450:ranting2: disk still not arrived. Supposed to have been dispatched on the 4th.:ranting2:
GRRRRRRRRRR

Bad luck mate :sad: