Hard drive failure, need to reformat drive, plz help

sabecity

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I have a dell 8300, 4 years old. it has a 80gb ide HDD

a couple of years back i got a 2nd hard drive installed. after a year, the computer just crashed. We got a computer guy in, and he replaced that hard drive. this hard drive also worked for a year, and then i think it crashed again. When the 2nd hard drive crashes i can't start up windows, and bios can't read the first HDD. I can't reformat the HDD with a windows disc, or with dan's bust and nuke. I just want to reformat the drive. can anyone tell me why bios won't recognize the HDD?

Please???
 

slicessoul

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can anyone tell me why bios won't recognize the HDD?

Bios can't see the hdd can be caused by several aspects such as, HDD is dead, no more power, burned chip, connector cables are defected and maybe there are another aspects that i don't know.

If the HDD is dead or the chip is burned, well, you don't have any choices than buy a new one. Try to check the power cable and IDE cable, are they correctly connected ? does the cables in good conditions ?

What kind of HDD is it ? did you buy a new one in that time ?
This computer guy, how he mounted the HDD ? Was it close to another HDD ?
Check your warranty. Maybe you still have time to RMA it or get a little discussion with this computer guy.
 

sabecity

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well, The Harddrive is a toshiba 80gb HD, and the other one was a 120gb seagate. I checked the Power cable and the IDE cable, and they were fine. no-one would have touched them anyway. the 80gb HDD is the stock one that came with the computer. Both the Harddrives were mounted in the 2 slots my dell has, in master-slave config. the problem occured when one of the HDD's failed, and the computer would no longer regonize the other HDD. Unfortuantly i have movee countries, and thiss compter technician is in NZ.
 

slicessoul

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I'll make resume :

So there are 2 HDDs in your PC :
1 Toshiba 80GB
1 Seagate 120GB

There are 2 IDE slots in your mainboard.
1 IDE port for Toshiba 80GB as Master and Seagate 120GB as slave.
at this point am i correct ?

Which HDD is failed ? Toshiba or Seagate ?

Do you have a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM ?
 

sabecity

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yes, you are right, 2 hdds

I'm not sure which HDD failed, neither of them register in the bios, but i think it is the segate, as an earlier secondary HDD in the comupter failed before.

I have a DVD-RW or sumthing, just 1. that and the floopy drive are connected to the other IDE slot in the motherboard..
 

Doughbuy

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Did you try taking out one of the HDD's and just having one in there and see if bios can recognize it? You might need to fiddle around with your master/slave settings.
 

sabecity

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yes, i tried each HDD indivdually, and made sure the jumpers were where they were meant to be, but the bios still doesn't recognize them. unfortuabtly i don't have another pc i can plug the HD's into.
 

slicessoul

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Did you change something in BIOS ?

If you can go to internet and you've said that you don't have any other PC so it's mean you still have windows working on your PC ?

In which HDD Windows is installed ?

If it's in the toshiba, no doubt it's the Seagate crashed.
 

sabecity

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well, i actually have 2 other computers, but i can't put the HDD's in them. They are both Macs :) No-one should have messed with bios. However I managed to get Dan's Nuke and Bust to reformat the toshiba HDD. It's working on it now, so hopefully i can reinstal windows after it's finished. btw, can i just install windows with my reinstallation disc? or do i have to but another copy of windows?

Thanks for helping me Slicesoul
 

yourmothersanastronaut

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You can too use them in Macs, assuming the Mac in question has IDE. All you'd need to do is when you format it, it will probably be HFS+. At least if you can format the drive in a Mac, it means the problem is somewhere other than the hard drive you tested.

Does your motherboard have SATA? If it does, I'd suggest buying a SATA drive, assuming you want to buy yet another hard drive.
 

slicessoul

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IMO, if you have the Windows disc, you can be legally use it for your own purposes as long as you don't make copies and sell it, you bought it and you have your serial and activation key. So, yes you can reinstall it.

I never get through on those legal or illegal laws, kind of confusing. I work for life, i bought what i need and i use what i already bought. Bill Gates has lots of money, reducing the price of Windows would be a good idea... :lol:

Thanks for helping me...
My pleasure.
 

sabecity

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well, after running Dan's nuke and boot, Bios will still not read the HDD. But 80gb HDD's are cheap, i'll see if i can get one and install windows on it. (unless anyone else has some smart ideas)
I know it's 4 years old, but It's still faster than some of the computers dell stlll sells now :)
 

sabecity

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well, i can't really aford a new computer, and dell still sells things like this
Dell Computer

However, i still got one question. Should i get a IDE HDD or a Sata HDD? is there any difference performance wise?
 

yourmothersanastronaut

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If you're going to buy a new hard drive, and your motherboard supports it, then by all means buy a SATA drive.

Now, speed-wise, SATA drives are generally faster. But, it's not because the drive is SATA vs. IDE. The SATA bus has a higher theoretical bandwidth, but no drive available now can saturate the bus.

On the other hand, since no one is making IDE hard drives anymore, all the faster drives now are on a SATA bus. And there is very little difference in price, especially since 80GB drives are very cheap now.