Strange HDD behavior

[coldrex]

Hi all,

I have a computer with 1 (master) HDD, and the model is Seagate Barracuda ATA IV ST340016A.

A few days ago I have connected to comp the other HDD as a slave, just to copy some files. The model is Seagate ST320410A. After that I have disconnected the second drive and left the system as it was before.

After that strange things started. Here is the list:

1. Win XP is loading extremely (!) slow.
2. CHDSK is starting all the time, and the checking is also very slow.
3. Sometimes the system is asking to enter user's pass - although I have never set up any passwords.
4. Sometimes tha black display is appearing with "Start Windows in Safe Mode", "Last configuration that worked" etc.
5. I have tried to defrag the whole disk with O&O Defrag, the analisys goes to 100%, shows 58% degree of fragmentation and then stucks on 0%. Once I left the comp for some 4 hours - after that it was still 0%.

Dear gurus, could You please give some good advice how to cure the drive?

Thanx in advance!

 

[Paperdoc]

What MAY have happened is that your BIOS auto-detected the second drive while it was present and cannot un-detect it now, so it keeps trying to use a HDD that is not responding!

You need to go into BIOS Setup screens to check for these things. On many machines to get there, you turn on the power and hold down the "Del" key while it starts to boot. It will go to the first Setup screen instead of fully booting up. You need to find the place where the parameters for the IDE drives are specified. You should have one line for your original Primary Master drive there. Then look for a line for the Primary Slave. If it shows you some parameters for that, too, change them so the drive type is NONE, or something like that, to make it recognize that there is no Slave. When done, Save and Exit and it will save those settings and boot up. We hope, in fact, it will boot cleanly from the only hard drive it has and stop trying to make the other one (that does not exist!) work, too.

 

[firephoenix]

To second Paperdoc, is there any anomaly in your System Properties-> Devices Manager?

A curiosity question to ask yourself, what did you copy over? Any remote chance of virus or malware?

For further far fetched possibilities, you can try the "un-do do" technique on some of your specific problems, e.g. set up a user password, then delete it, or create a new account, then delete it, etc.

 

[briapro]

You might try clearing the CMOS. This has helped me in adding and removing hds from my system in the past.

 

[Pointertovoid]

There are better methods than clearing the Cmos, for being more precisely targeted, like typing the right settings in the Bios.

 

[MyComputerDoc]

You may have transferred a virus or the hard drive is starting to go bad. I used Seagate hard drives in the past. When they purchased Maxtor I started to see more failures in all of there hard drives. Run a chkdsk on the drive and then check for viruses (MALWAREBYTE'S, CounterSpy and a good antivirus like Panda Internet Security)