Thread: hard drive failure.

  1. #1
    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    Unhappy hard drive failure.

    I recently picked up a second hand 40GB maxtor hard drive. It powers up and gets detected in the BIOS and during boot...but then after it finishes detecting the IDE devices on boot, it says "Primary Master failed".....I put it in my other rig as slave, and got "Primary Slave failed"...i continue to boot from the master, and windows picks up the hard drive and I can browse the files on it...but why can't I boot from it??

    please help

    -psychopath
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
    B.Sc Computer Science

    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

  2. #2
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    I guess you now know why it was for sale.

  3. #3
    unleashed alphaoide's Avatar
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    If everything else fails, low-level format the HD. You could get the utility for that from the manufacturer's website.
    source: compsci textbooks, cboard.cprogramming.com, world wide web, common sense

  4. #4
    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    I formatted it with MaxBlast 3...still nothing

    -psychopath
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
    B.Sc Computer Science

    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

  5. #5
    Hamster without a wheel iain's Avatar
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    damaged mbr?
    Monday - what a way to spend a seventh of your life

  6. #6
    unleashed alphaoide's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iain
    damaged mbr?
    That's what I thought to. I almost always mess up the MBR after installing linux distro; however, low-level formatting always fixes it. Not in his case, I guess.
    source: compsci textbooks, cboard.cprogramming.com, world wide web, common sense

  7. #7
    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    whats mbr?

    -psychopath
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
    B.Sc Computer Science

    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by psychopath
    whats mbr?
    Master Boot Record. That's the gate between BIOS and OS, where your OS loader is expected and where the partition table resides. Should have been rewritten after LL format I guess.
    main() { int O[!0<<~-!0]; (!0<<!0)[O]+= ~0 +~(!0|!0<<!0); printf("a function calling "); }

  9. #9
    5|-|1+|-|34|) ober's Avatar
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    You can fix the mbr. Get a DOS bootdisk (or linux bootdisk may have a utility) and put the fdisk program on the disk. Boot and type "fdisk /mbr" and hit enter. This should repair the mbr. Reboot and see what happens.

  10. #10
    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    tried it...fdisk dosn't reconize my HDD....but linux, windows setup, and my other windows computer does?....just not fdisk and the boot process-thingy!?

    -psychopath
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
    B.Sc Computer Science

    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

  11. #11
    It's full of stars adrianxw's Avatar
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    Have you got the PowerMax tool from Maxtors website? That might find any problems.
    Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity unto the dream.

  12. #12
    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    yup....i got ran powermax a little while after I posted and it showed an errors after a 90 second scan ...o well...i can still use the drive as a storage drive....just pick up another cheap drive as my boot drive...thanks anyway everyone

    -psychopath
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
    B.Sc Computer Science

    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

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