Fried HD?

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rtek

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In the past week, my hard drive was going downhill. Just two days ago, it stopped booting up at all.

At first, while in windows, my computer would randomly just reboot, and at the BIOS, it scans the IDE and picks up the hard drive, but I get a disk error, and it won't boot up to windows. Each time I had to insert the XP cd, go to Windows Setup, get to the Recovery Console, and run CHKDSK. that would usually fix it for another boot, but then the same thing kept repeating over and over.

But now, either when I go to Windows setup and select Recovery Console, when the prompt appears it gives me an invalid disk error, and I can't run checkdisk, or basically anything. I would say the power cable may have something to do with it, as it seems looser than any other molex plug, but I've tested the power cable the HD uses on some LED bars and that doesn't appear to be the problem, ALTHOUGH while rotating the hard drive a slight bit while holding it in my hand, it would sometimes restart, spin heavily and make that little click noise. Maybe it is the internal power?

Anyway, I would run the diagnostics, but then comes more problems in the way... the computer does not have a floppy drive. Using this (another) computer, I downloaded the Maxtor diagnostic test, and the setup requires it be copied onto a floppy. I attempted to copy the files to place on to a bootable CD-R, but it gives me a copy error while trying to copy the diagnostic file onto the hard drive.

Seeing as the warranty on this hard drive expired in May, my only choice is to go out and buy a new one. I would like to know if this one can be recovered, at least to the extent of one boot so I can get all my important files from it. Any advice will be appreciated.

(Also, can I have some advice on which is the best surge protectors for CAT5 cables? Recently a surge has knocked out my DSL modem, router, and notebook ethernet port. I'm looking for something effective yet inexpensive, and can cover 4 cat5 cables.)

Thank you.

(btw... its a Maxtor DiamondMax 80GB 5400RPM.
Any help is appreciated!
 
ok, after rewiring my power cables to ready it for a new hard drive, i've realized that the current one (suggested fried), has just really, very bad power connections. While moving the cable in different directions, the hard drive will make the noise it makes when the system turns on, like a little "whee" sound, possibly the starting of the spinning of the disk, also, i've noticed that when the motherboard can't detect the HD, the HD activity light is always on. It's definately not the molex connector, so it must be the pins in the hard drive itself. I'm not too sure if their supposed to be like it, but they seem blackened. Is there some kind of thing I can do to secure those pins? Maybe there is a way to clean them? Any help is appreciated.

Bad Harddrive : Maxtor Diamondmax 80GB 5400RPM
New Harddrive(just ordered): Western Digital Caviar 200GB 7200RPM
 
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