Replacing bad sata drive

[mulaw]

Hello,

I just replaced a bad sata HDD. The old one had a bad MBR and I wanted to see if I could access the data files off the old drive. I setup the new sata HDD with WINXP Pro, but when I drop the old HDD back into the machine on a separate sata channel, the new HDD begins to boot, but never finishes. Any suggestions?

 

[chesteracorgi]

1. Make certain that you BIOS is set up to restrict booting to your new HDD.

If that does not fix the problem then look in your mobo manual (and or BIOS) to see if it allows hot swapping of SATA drives. If it does then:

2. Disconnect the older (failed) HDD from its SATA connector.

3. Boot from the new HDD.

4. Plug in the older HDD to its SATA connector.

Take care that you do not touch any internal parts carring current or charges. Doing so is potentially fatal , and more likely you will fry the component you touch.

Always ground yourself before touching any parts on your computer.

 

[mulaw]

Chesteracorgi:

Thank you for the response. My bios must not support hot swapping. I did attempt connecting the old HDD after a re-boot, but the operating system doesn't recognize the old HDD.

I upgraded the Bios prior to installing the new HDD. In the Bios, the new HDD is selected as the second (and only) HDD choice for booting. Third is the CD-ROM.

 

[JerRevo]

Chesteracorgi:

Thank you for the response. My bios must not support hot swapping. I did attempt connecting the old HDD after a re-boot, but the operating system doesn't recognize the old HDD.

I upgraded the Bios prior to installing the new HDD. In the Bios, the new HDD is selected as the second (and only) HDD choice for booting. Third is the CD-ROM.

Just FYI, you should never update BIOS unless you experience problems. Well, I am pretty certain the update was not the cause however. But, I do believe the old HDD is toast. But we can find out if it's possible to correct. I believe you said the PC never finished booting with the old drive connected right? So, plug it in, make sure it's not the master boot HDD, and go into BIOS setup and look to see if your BIOS detects it properly. Sometimes when drives die like this they show some ASCII characters in place of where the model of the HDD should be. If your BIOS sees the drive and does not show any funny characters, find the DFT program for the HDD manufacturer and run the long test. At some point it should ask, if the problem is bad sectors, to repair them; although from the description of what it's doing I suspect the problem is much more serious. It sounds like the problem is either mechanical or chip related. In that even the only things you can do at this point is to try and replace the board on the HDD from a new one of the same make and model or send to a data recovery specialist which can be very expensive.

Do you hear any loud clicking noises or anything else? Does it sound like the drive spins up at all?