HD not found on bootup - HELP!

[steerpike33]

My boot HD is dead, or so it appears. It's a Seagate BarracudaII 30GB EIDE ATA100 HD. It's spinning but the system doesn't see it on the post screen. I don't even make it to Windows. Everything stops at the post screen. I've checked all connections, moved things around on the cable and controllers. Is there any hope in saving this drive or should I replace it?

The HD been dissappearing from the boot screen a few times. All I would do is turn off the machine and it would appear again when I turned it on. Sound like a dying drive? Hope I can save it somehow.

The HD has a dual boot config on it with 3 partitions. One is Fat32 with Win98, the second is NTFS with WinXP Pro and the third is Fat32 for data, and apps.

Are there any utilities that will that will let me boot off a floppy to a dos prompt and possibly let me see those partitions on the HD. I've tried a WIN98 stat-up disk with no luck. Also tried a WINXP boot floppydisk, but it would not boot for me.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[lhgpoobaa]

hmmm. you could TRY running the HDD diagnostic software from seagate, but if cant detect the drive.... hmmm. not really much you can do beside swap cables and jiggle things around, hoping its a bad contact.

<b><font color=orange>My <font color=green>life <font color=red>has <font color=blue>been <font color=black>so <font color=purple>much <font color=yellow>more <font color=orange>colourful <font color=green>since <font color=blue>the <font color=red>advent <font color=black>of <font color=purple>Super <font color=red>VGA! :lol:

 

[steerpike33]

You're exactly right. It's the connection. That's what I thought. The computer doesn't even know the drive is there. I have plenty of HDD tools, but they're useless if the drive can't be seen. I've been jiggling cables and switching things around all day with no luck.

Guess it's time to throw in the towel and get a new drive. I'm out of options.

Thanks anyways!

I'll have to look into a good back-up system incase this happens again. Don't really care about the HD, but I hate losing the files. Sigh.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

shame. i hope you didnt loose anything important.



<b><font color=orange>My <font color=green>life <font color=red>has <font color=blue>been <font color=black>so <font color=purple>much <font color=yellow>more <font color=orange>colourful <font color=green>since <font color=blue>the <font color=red>advent <font color=black>of <font color=purple>Super <font color=red>VGA! :lol:

 

[llewelyn]

Before you throw your hard disk away, you should check out why it doesn't boot from the floppy because normally you can goto the dos prompt from the win98 start disk.

Go into the BIOS see if the floppy drive is in the boot sequence and then put it first in the queue. If this doesn't work you have a different problem.

 

[chipd]

- try to move it to another computer (your old one?) and see if it works.

- check that the jumpers are in the right place depending on if you have another disk on the chain or not.