harddrive

[Cruelty]

my harddrive is probably broken. im not a hardware guy, so im not 100% sure tho. so i took out my HD like a month ago. it traveled with me halfway across the country and back. now when i re-install it, it just makes a clicking sound, and my computer wont read it, OR my other HD. when i unhook the power from the presumed damaged HD, it'll read the un-damaged one just fine. when i hook up the presumed damaged one without the other one, it doesn't read it.

it's fucked, aint it?

and since it probably is, why on earth does my computer not recognize my other HD while the busted one is hooked up?

 

[4StarGeneral]

If its just making a clicking sound, it could mean it's fine and is just in wrong. Since you have two harddrives, I'm presuming you know how to make one a Slave and the other a Master. If not that alone may be your problem.

OR

That harddrive is screwed and broken, so if its hooked up, when the computer tries to read it, it will halt the startup procedure. Depends on the setup and which ones a slave, you may be able to stop it from booting if you go into BIOS, depending on your motherboard.

 

[Cruelty]

i'm not entirely sure. ill assume the master harddrive is the one hooked to the first plug/whatever, and the slave is the one hooked to the plug that branches off from the first one?

i typically have the malfunctioning drive as the slave i guess.

i don't really know a damn thing about BIOS or anything like that.

 

[4StarGeneral]

Alright, so the second harddrive may just be the problem. Now I'm not too good at teaching people about these, but see if you can follow.

http://www.pchell.com/images/masterslave.jpg[/img]
On the above picture, there are two hard drives. The top one is the slave and the bottom is the master. To make your malfunctioning one a slave, just put one of the plastic things (I can't remember the technical name) onto the harddrive on two of the pins vertically as shown above. And thats about it, you should then have a slave drive. You may have to try different pins, but it should matter.

If that doesn't work after that, then it's most likely busted, unless I can think of something else.

 

[___]

Those are called jumpers, and it's different according to your hard drive manufacturer and model.  If your manufacturer loves you they'll have an image printed on the drive that explains how to lay out your jumpers according to your needs.  Putting them on cable select is the easiest option; if that doesn't work, make sure you have them set to master and slave in an appropriate fashion. 

If you can't find a picture that shows you what the layout should be, hopefully it'll have a little chart with a list of pin numbers, which if you look closely you can figure out by looking on the board on the back of the drive.  Next to one of the pins should be a marking, usually "J50" but it'll differ by manufacturer.  That'll mark either the first or last one, so they'll go:

50 48 46 44
49 47 45 43

In that fashion counting from the pin.  You can puzzle that one out easily enough and then place the jumper appropriately; if you can't figure it out don't sweat it, just post the HD model and I'll see if I can find info for you.  Trial and error works too :D

In any case don't worry, it's not dead unless you did something really brutal to it.

 

[Cruelty]

ok so luckily enough for me there is a diagram on this thing. apparently there was a jumper on it, and it was on 'enable cable select'. i took it off, which apparently sets it as a slave when theres no jumper at all on it. now it doesn't fuck up during startup, but its just plain not being read at all.


nvm, fuck it. ive come to the conclusion that my drive is afflicted with a head crash. thanks for the help tho guys.

 

[Trevlac]

If you haven't given up in these last couple days, you can see if the drive is bad by downloading the Hitachi/IBM Drive Fitness Test.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/d ... 12_b01.iso

It's an ISO so better be packing something like Nero to burn as a bootable CD. Just run that DFT and it'll tell you if the drive is bad. If so, new HD.

 

[Xilef]

hard drives break spectaculary if carried around too much, I carried mine on a journey from london to blackpool and when i tried it it screamed at me before working, now i have to plug it in twice before my computers recognise it's existance.
The hard drive inside is a small, compact-disc-like machine with a very small laser reader close to the disc, when it is knocked only slightly the shock in the HDD's house can jolt the HDD quite violently and smack the laser reader against the disc, Mac Books actually have a motion sensor built in to clamp the hardrive if it is moved suddenly to protect this risk, expensive HDD houses have this too.
So when you carried it if you dropped the HDD house flat onto it's base or top then it is highly likely the optical reader came in contact with the disk.
If you can't detect it at all on a computer, try in in another house and if that doesn't work it is fucked my friend.
EDIT: Try it on a UNIX computer too, for some reason I've found that a few battered-up hard drives can work on Unix systems but not Windows comps, my brother's 360gig HDD is the perfect example, it survived his boarding school but when pluggin into a Windows comp it is not detected at all, even when formatted to Windows from a Mac, but my Linux and my families many Macs can detect it fine.

 

[Trevlac]

UNIX os is on PCs... why did you say it works on some *NIX systems but not PC?

Also, because Linux/Unix doesn't use NTFS checksums or error detection, it can usually play up until something is beyond corrupt (example, my Resident Evil sound track was actually broken almost in half and it played all but the last three tracks).

 

[Xilef]

Replace PC with WinOS :S