Second HDD drive problems

apd100

Honorable
May 30, 2012
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10,510
Hi thanks for reading. So, my old pc was a windows vista which died on me so i bought new componants and used my old hdd from my previous pc in my new one which decided to die on startup so i bought a new hdd and freshly installed windows 7 on it. This new pc has worked fine no problems at all. The reason my old one died was because the board on the hdd had fried. Iv just recieved a new board today and iv plugged it in as a slave to make sure it works and it does, my pc recognises it and after giving it an initial and a format i was able to access it. So i took the board off the new hdd and put it on my old fried hdd and it fires up as the only drive (main drive) but this time my pc wont fire up. It seems to ignore my f8 command to enter DOS or boot up and goes straight onto this message:

Amibios(c)2010 American Megatrends
Asus M4A88T-M ACPI bIOS Revision 2403
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II x2 245 Processor
Speed: 2.9Ghz
DDR3-1333, Unganged mode

Press DEL to run setup
Boot selection popup has been selected
Press Alt+f2 to execute ASUS EZ-Flash 2

Autodetecting SATA 1... IDE hard Disk

3rd Master Hard disk error
Press f1 to resume

---- after pressing f1 i get the message "reboot + select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press any key.


If i attach the drive as a slave drive with my fully functioning windows 7 drive has boot 1 i get the same message but with a slight difference

Amibios(c)2010 American Megatrends
Asus M4A88T-M ACPI bIOS Revision 2403
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II x2 245 Processor
Speed: 2.9Ghz
DDR3-1333, Unganged mode

Press DEL to run setup
****Press f8 for BBS popup*********
Boot selection popup has been selected
Press Alt+f2 to execute ASUS EZ-Flash 2

Autodetecting SATA 1... IDE hard Disk

******4th Slave Hard disk error******
Press f1 to resume

-- with again the same error asking for boot disk after pressing f1.

The weird thing is, I had the old disk with the new board plugged in as a slave and my pc booted up fine but i couldnt recognise it in my disk management like i could before i changed the boards over.

Anybody got ideas?

Eagerly awaiting replies. Thanks.

P.S i dont want to format or lose the data on the old drive hense me buying a new board. Thanks in advance
 

apd100

Honorable
May 30, 2012
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10,510
Oh and my old HDD is a western digital blue 500g which was fried but is now working and making vibrating noises and I have actually had my pc fire up to the desktop with it plugged in a slave (i think) but i couldnt find it anywhere.

My main drive is a western digital green 1tb.

Now i cant boot up with the green WD as main and the old WD blue as a slave. I get the above message. I have to totally disconnect the old one for my pc to boot up properly.
 

apd100

Honorable
May 30, 2012
7
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10,510
I have more information now. I realised i had my main hd set in sata 1 and my old vista hd in sata 4 which makes them RAID? So i put my vista HD in sata 3 instead and I still got the error message above but after pressing F1 to resume, it booted up my desktop normally.
 

apd100

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May 30, 2012
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I can acces my BIOS fine without my second hdd connected but cannot access bios with it connected it just takes me to a black screen with a blue stripe at the top and says "Wait...." and never goes any further
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
If I read right, you have an older HDD that failed because its pc board failed. You bought a new HDD and proved that it works perfectly. Then you transplanted the pc board from the new HDD to the old one and that "repaired" old drive cannot be detected cleanly by the BIOS. The boot messages continually report an error from that HDD, and the result is usually a complete failure to boot the machine.

The attempted repair of your old HDD by board transplant has not worked. There are a LOT of details in matching a pc board to a drive, so that simply buying an apparently identical HDD does not guarantee the board transplant will work. I can't outline them all, so search more completely around here and elsewhere for just exactly how to ensure a match. Be aware that, in some cases, it simply cannot be done! I suggest also you contact the Tech Support group at the manufacturer of your failed old HDD to see if they can advise how to ensure a matching replacement pc board, or suggest where to shop for one.

Another alternative, just MAYBE, is to find out whether the failed components of your old HDD's bad pc board can be replaced. In other words, can the bad board itself be repaired so the old drive can work with it?
 

apd100

Honorable
May 30, 2012
7
0
10,510
Very useful advice, never thought about repairing the old board, certaintly going to look into that :) On boot up it does show as detecting 2 sata drives (on the error page) then continues to say 3rd hard disk error. I was hoping there would be software available to sort it all out for me lol.

I wondered if i made my old hdd my main drive and inserted a vista recovery cd in when it asks for one i could boot it up and use a data recovery cd? But then like you say it sounds like the drive isnt actually functional at all :(
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
Now you're confusing me. Your first post says you know the board on the old HDD was "fried". Now you ask whether you could put it all back together with the old board, plug it in and fix it with a Repair Install process from the Vista Install CD.

First of all, if you try this, make sure that old drive is the ONLY one in your new machine at the time - do not risk damaging data on other drives while experimenting.

I wonder, though, why you think this could work. If the board on the old HDD really is damaged, no amount of software manipulations can fix that. On the other hand, it the old drive's failure really was a software and data corruption issue, and NOT a "fried" board, maybe it can work. How sure are you of the diagnosis that the board was "fried"?