Hanging hard drive - what to do?

[Ohgodhelp]

I have two Seagate Barracudas, my main C drive and my secondary hard drive, drive X.

Whenever I have drive C plugged in, the system hangs. It hangs when -

■Windows' XP Installation disc says 'Examining 500gb hard drive 0 at id 0 on bus 0 on atpi'.

■When XP is at its splash loading screen (Where it shows XP logo and the blue loading bar) the blue bar will continue to scroll for five minutes then the screen goes black.

When drive C is unplugged the system doesn't hang at all. My bios recognizes both hard drives.

Help?

 

[khelben1979]

Please describe the exact models of the harddrives and some information about your other pc hardware.

My current guess is that something is wrong with the harddrive, but you can also try booting from a Knoppix Linux CD to see if you can have both harddrives connected at the same time without experiencing that the whole system freezes.

 

[Ohgodhelp]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148136

Those are the exact hard drives I bought.

They're Seagate Barracudas @ 500gb a piece.

Other specs -
Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.0ghz
2gb of RAM
GIGABYTE S Series Motherboard - S3R
Corsair 550 watt PSU

Then there's the two Barracudas and a WD IDE drive as well.

 

[newnerd]

Hi Ohgodhelp:

You mentioned your system doesn't hang when the "C" drive is disconnected? The operating system is always on the C: drive and I'm not sure how you can boot up windows without a C: drive. If you already have Windows installed on another hard drive and are trying a new install on the new drive you will need to either remove the old O.S. drive before installing windows or use the Seagate disk to transfer the existing O.S. installation to the new drive by booting from that.
If you decide to do a fresh install of Windows on a new drive I would disconnect all the other hard drives and then re-connect them after you have Windows completely installed and updated on the new drive. At that point, go into the bios and make sure that the new O.S. drive is first in the boot order and then format the old O.S. drive and partition it to suit your needs.
If you have problems installing Windows on the new drive at least you will have the old drive with Windows already installed to fall back on. I hope I haven't misunderstood your problem. It's always hard to solve a problem without knowing all the details.

 

[Ohgodhelp]

Hi Ohgodhelp:

You mentioned your system doesn't hang when the "C" drive is disconnected? The operating system is always on the C: drive and I'm not sure how you can boot up windows without a C: drive. If you already have Windows installed on another hard drive and are trying a new install on the new drive you will need to either remove the old O.S. drive before installing windows or use the Seagate disk to transfer the existing O.S. installation to the new drive by booting from that.
If you decide to do a fresh install of Windows on a new drive I would disconnect all the other hard drives and then re-connect them after you have Windows completely installed and updated on the new drive. At that point, go into the bios and make sure that the new O.S. drive is first in the boot order and then format the old O.S. drive and partition it to suit your needs.
If you have problems installing Windows on the new drive at least you will have the old drive with Windows already installed to fall back on. I hope I haven't misunderstood your problem. It's always hard to solve a problem without knowing all the details.

The operating system isn't always on the C drive. I also have it on my secondary drive, X.

I'm sorry but it seems you may have misunderstood. I don't want to install windows, I just want my main C drive to be back up and running. If you need more details, I'd be happy to answer!

 

[newnerd]

Hi Ohgodhelp:
Sorry if I misunderstood your problem. I was under the impression that you had two Windows O.S. on two different hard drives and thot maybe you didn't have your pc set up for a dual boot. Unless you have properly set up your pc to have two operating systems I don't think you will be able to get the new hard drive to work. Your bios hard drive order will will control which hard drives will be the first to boot but having two hard drives with O.S.'s on them would require some sort of boot manager to control the access to the operating systems. I don't use dual boot systems myself but I feel there is likely a problem with the use of dual operating systems causing your problem and not a mechanical problem. If it is your intention to have 2 O.S.'s you might need to look into how to set up a dual boot pc. There are free downloads that will allow you to dual-boot boot a pc but without a dual boot manager to control the access order you probably will have exactly the problem you are having. (I think, but am not absolutely sure LOL!) You might try googling "dual boot" and "boot manager" and you will find a lot of information on the requirements to have 2 operating system hard drives on the same pc. Good luck! I hope you figure out the problem.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Well, I got the 320G model, it lasted 2 days. I got the same problem you describe.

Download seatools and run diagnostics. If its bad you got to RMA.

I had to RMA mine.

 

[newnerd]

A quick clarification. If a hard drive has a windows operating system on it, it will always be the C: drive. If you have two drives that have Windows on them, they both want to be C: and that confuses your pc. If you want the problem hard drive to work you either have to get rid of the O.S. from that drive or set up a dual boot system (mentioned above). I think the reason the second drive is giving you problems is because Window will only let you use the original installation. You bought 1 O.S. and can't have it twice sort of thing. If you remove the original drive with the O.S. on it, I would bet that you would be able to install windows (if not already properly installed) and get the pc to boot without problem. To be able to use the original for storage you would need to remove Windows from it.....usually easiest by installing the Seagate software that is used to set up a new drive and it will then be prepared for use as storage and not as a system drive.

 

[derek2006]

I have my OS on D. For some reason the boot sector or whatever installed on C: (which was supposed to be the storage only drive) and the os installed on the D drive which was meant for the OS and games. The C drive is a 500GB samsung SATA. And the D drive is dual 120GB ATA Seagates in RAID 0 through a PCI card.

At first I also couldn't figure out why my system would not boot without the storage drive since the OS was on the Raid array. But I eventually found out something went wrong in my windows install. When I install apps they auto detect that my OS is on the D drive and also always install to it instead of the C drive.

 

[Ohgodhelp]

Hi Ohgodhelp:
Sorry if I misunderstood your problem. I was under the impression that you had two Windows O.S. on two different hard drives and thot maybe you didn't have your pc set up for a dual boot. Unless you have properly set up your pc to have two operating systems I don't think you will be able to get the new hard drive to work. Your bios hard drive order will will control which hard drives will be the first to boot but having two hard drives with O.S.'s on them would require some sort of boot manager to control the access to the operating systems. I don't use dual boot systems myself but I feel there is likely a problem with the use of dual operating systems causing your problem and not a mechanical problem. If it is your intention to have 2 O.S.'s you might need to look into how to set up a dual boot pc. There are free downloads that will allow you to dual-boot boot a pc but without a dual boot manager to control the access order you probably will have exactly the problem you are having. (I think, but am not absolutely sure LOL!) You might try googling "dual boot" and "boot manager" and you will find a lot of information on the requirements to have 2 operating system hard drives on the same pc. Good luck! I hope you figure out the problem.

See, I don't normally have two OS's. I just installed it on my X drive in hopes of accessing C. I had the problem before installing the second operating system. Without you even saying anything, I could tell you haven't dual booted. You don't need a boot record configured for multiple operating systems to work.

Well, I got the 320G model, it lasted 2 days. I got the same problem you describe.

Download seatools and run diagnostics. If its bad you got to RMA.

I had to RMA mine.

Yeah, that's what I did. I ran SeaTools and with the exception of a few bad sectors, it checked out.

A quick clarification. If a hard drive has a windows operating system on it, it will always be the C: drive. If you have two drives that have Windows on them, they both want to be C: and that confuses your pc. If you want the problem hard drive to work you either have to get rid of the O.S. from that drive or set up a dual boot system (mentioned above). I think the reason the second drive is giving you problems is because Window will only let you use the original installation. You bought 1 O.S. and can't have it twice sort of thing. If you remove the original drive with the O.S. on it, I would bet that you would be able to install windows (if not already properly installed) and get the pc to boot without problem. To be able to use the original for storage you would need to remove Windows from it.....usually easiest by installing the Seagate software that is used to set up a new drive and it will then be prepared for use as storage and not as a system drive.

That's where you're wrong, if a hard drive has a windows OS on it, it won't always be C. I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but you're totally incorrect. Both hard drives aren't going to try to boot, that's why there's a boot priority. Getting rid of the OS on drive X, will not help the problem drive (drive C) I had the problem before installing the second OS.

The other thing is that if your theory is true then the hard drive should boot by itself, which it doesn't. I've had all the drives unplugged with the exception of the C drive and it still doesn't boot. Thanks for your effort though! Any more ideas I'd be glad to hear them.

I have my OS on D. For some reason the boot sector or whatever installed on C: (which was supposed to be the storage only drive) and the os installed on the D drive which was meant for the OS and games. The C drive is a 500GB samsung SATA. And the D drive is dual 120GB ATA Seagates in RAID 0 through a PCI card.

At first I also couldn't figure out why my system would not boot without the storage drive since the OS was on the Raid array. But I eventually found out something went wrong in my windows install. When I install apps they auto detect that my OS is on the D drive and also always install to it instead of the C drive.

Like this guy here, your drive that contains your OS will not always be C.

 

[khelben1979]

Just flush the partitions from Linux and be done with it.

Link to Knoppix ( http://www.knoppix.net ).

 

[newnerd]

Hi again Ohgodhelp:
Sorry if I have misinformed you about both your O.S. drives being designated C: I haven't read a lot about dual boots but the post that came to mind was about an individual who installed Vista from the DVD and it by default designated the 2nd drive as C: even though the pre-existing XP system drive was also designated C: I was unsure if the same thing occurs with XP or not. The drive designation in your case makes no difference since you are only allowed to install one copy of XP on one partition according to the MS EULA. To solve your problem, if your new drive checks out ok with Seagate SeaTools, I still think my previous post below would be a good thing to try:

Hi Ohgodhelp:

DISREGARD: You mentioned your system doesn't hang when the "C" drive is disconnected? The operating system is always on the C: drive and I'm not sure how you can boot up windows without a C: drive.
MY RECOMMENDATION STILL:
If you already have Windows installed on another hard drive hard drive and are trying a new install on the new drive you will need to either remove the old O.S. drive before installing windows or use the Seagate disk to transfer the existing O.S. installation to the new drive by booting from that.
If you decide to do a fresh install of Windows on a new drive I would disconnect all the other hard drives hard drives and then re-connect them after you have Windows completely installed and updated on the new drive. At that point, go into the bios and make sure that the new O.S. drive is first in the boot order and then format the old O.S. drive and partition it to suit your needs.
If you have problems installing Windows on the new drive at least you will have the old drive with Windows already installed to fall back on. I hope I haven't misunderstood your problem.
EDIT: I just recently transferred the XP operating system from my old 250 GB Seagate HDs to new WD 640GB HDs on two pcs using the WD dvd and the entire contents transferred without problems. XP doesn't have built in support for drives over 137 GBs until the Service Packs are installed so the Seagate tools will set up the drive so that XP can utilize the larger HD if you want a fresh XP install. The transfer process includes the new drive being set up as either storage or system install.
Trying this would be an easy way to see if the disk is the problem.
khelben1979's suggestion would work also but the use of the Seagate disk installation software should be easy and requires little effort. Since you have an OEM version of the new drive with no Seagate disk, you can go to their website and download the needed software online.