Hard drive Gone Bad ???????

Hard drive gone bad
The most common problems originatefrom corruption of the master boot record, FAT, or directory.Those are soft problems which can usually be taken care ofwith a combination of tools like Fdisk /mbr to refresh themaster boot record followed by a reboot and Norton disk doctoror Spinneret.
The most common hardware problems are a bad controller, a baddrive motor, or a bad head mechanism.
1. Can the BIOS see and identify the hard drive correctly? Ifit can't, then the hard drives onboard controller is bad.
2. Does the drive spin and maintain a constant velocity? If itdoes, that's good news. The motor is functioning.
3. If the drive surges and dies, the most likely cause is abad controller (assuming the drive is cool). A gate allowingthe current to drive the motor may not be staying open. Thedrive needs a new controller.
4. Do you hear a lot of head clatter when the machine isturned on and initialized (but before the system attempts toaccess the hard drive). Head clatter would indicate that thespindle bearings are sloppy or worn badly. Maybe even lose andflopping around inside.
5. There is always the possibility that the controller you areusing in the machine has gone south.
1. If the drive spins, try booting to the A> prompt, run Fdiskand check to see if Fdisk can see a partition on the harddrive. If Fdisk can see the partition, that means that it canaccess the drive and that the controller electronics arefunctioning correctly. If there is no head clatter, it may bejust a matter of disk corruption which commonly occurs when asurge hits you machine and overwhelms the power supply voltageregulator. It commonly over whelms the system electronicsallowing an EM pulse to wipe out the master boot record, fileallocations table, and primary directory. Fdisk can fix themaster boot record and Norton Disk Doctor can restore the FATand Directory from the secondaries.2. The drive spins but Fdisk can't see it. Try the drive inanother system and repeat the test to confirm that Fdisk can'tread through the drives onboard controller. If it sees it inanother system, then your machines hard drive interface isbad. You can try an upgraded or replacement controller cardlike a Promise or CMD Technologies (there are others) in youmachine after disabling the integrated controller in the BIOS,but if the integrated controller went south, it may just besymptomatic of further failures and you'd be wise to replacethe motherboard. Trying the drive in another machine alsoeliminates the variable that your machines 12 volt poweroutput being bad
3. If you get head clatter but a constant velocity on thedrive motor (no surging), you might try sticking the harddrive in the freezer for about 12 hours. This is an old trickfrom back in the days of the MFM/ESDI driver era. This cancause the drive components to shrink enough to make the trackmarker align with the tracks. We don't see that kind ofplatter spindle wear much anymore, but back in the old days,the balancing and bearings weren't as good. Still, under theright circumstances, it might help. It would depend on how oldthe drive is and how many hours of wear have occurred. Youhave to be quick to get your info off the drive when it works.Back then, the drives were much smaller, so there wasn't somuch to copy. So, go after the important data first.
4. The drive doesn't spin. Either the onboard controller isbad or the motor is bad (assuming you did try the drive inanother machine). It's time to hit the net and localindependent shops to see if you can locate another drive ofthe same make and model that's good. Since the drive isprobably an older drive and no longer in distribution, yourbest bet is to find an identical used drive. If you knowsomeone with the same make and model, you might be wise to tryand persuade them to sell you their drive with an offer ofproviding them with a free upgraded drive. If you can locatean identical drive, start with the controller replacement ...this is the simplest and least invasive. If swapping thecontroller doesn't produce the desire result, you can tearinto the drive and swap the motors. While you have both driveopened up to accomplish this, scrutinize the platters, headsand armatures. You might even hook the drive up and power itfrom a system with both drives attached. This way, you couldsee anything that deviates between the actions of both driveswhen they are initialized. Swapping patters is unlikely toproduce any positive result. They are a balanced system likethe tires on your car and I suspect that the balance will bedifferent for each drive as will other variables.
5. There's always Ontrack Corp. who will attempt to recoupyour info starting at $500 and going up from there. They don'tfix and return the drive either.
If the info is all that important to you, I would seek someprofessional and experience technician in your locality whomakes his living from servicing and building computer systems... not just selling them. If you have had much experiencesalvaging information from bad hard drives, your likelihood ofsuccess is low. In the case of soft corruption, all utilitieshave their eccentricities. Often times, Norton Disk Doctorwill go too far (if you let it). It's wise to just let thoseutilities small steps and then have a look at the drive andsee if you can copy it off. Norton will go so far as to renamedirectories and files, and even delete them or break them upinto fragments which are useless._________________