HD Problems...

[Mr. tech]

Hey there,

I've got a 40 Gig HD that doesn't boot up when it is the Master HD and it wont allow the PC to boot up even if its the Slave HD. it's on a Celeoron Mother Board...

Becuase of this, I'm trying to wipe the HD using FDISk and then reformat it. Not sure if this will fix it or not.

I've instered my boot disk (it has win 98 on the HD) and restarted the PC but once it gets to the first page it writes:

IDE Primary Master ... [Press F4 to skip]

When I press F4 nothing happens so I am unable to get to the boot disk...

Is the HD corrupt? Can it be fixed? What do you think I should I do?

Cheers

 

[Mr. tech]

Any ideas about this? I'm stumped....

 

[TheMajor]

It has to be detected if you want to use FDISK.

Try different cable or connect it to the other channel.

 

[Mr. tech]

The thing is that I have tested other HDs with the same cable.

What do you mean by Other Channel?

Thanks mate

 

[TheMajor]

IDE0, IDE1 (Primary, secondary)
The other connector on the motherboard.

 

[Mr. tech]

Nope... I'm getting this now:

IDE Secondary Master ... [Press F4 to skip]

Doesn't seem to detect it at all... Would fdisking fix it? is there anyway around this first screen so i can get to fdisk?

Ben

 

[Samm]

I agree with The Major, your drive sounds like it's not being detected correctly.
What happens if you go into the Bios & run the auto-detect drives utility? Does it just hang?

 

[TheMajor]

You can get around it by disabling all IDE channels in your BIOS, but you won't be able to use FDISK because the disk will not be detected.

Go in your bios and set all IDE channels to "auto" and reboot. See if that helps.

Fdisk is useless in this situation.

 

[Mr. tech]

OK, I'll give it a try. So after I do this, how do I then fix the HD? Is it fixable? Any suggestions on what i can do?

I really aprpeciate your help

 

[TheMajor]

Its not being detected, that does not neccessarely mean it has some other failures as well.