I got a 40 GB Western Digital IDE ATA-100 hard drive i've had a few years now, never had any problems with it. Until I attempted to use Partition Magic 7 to convert a partition on the drive from NTFS to FAT32. Now I have done this before, with success, and on this drive. But this time something happened.

When I boot up sometimes the drive will not be detected at all. It takes fiddling around with the cables and a few restarts to get it working after each complete shut down. A restart is fine... The drive, when it first turns on will often (some times it doesnt) reset its power node, you can hear the drive power down, and back on. Several times (which damages drives, doesn't it?) in a row. I usually rearrange the power cable a few millimeters or so and that fixes it. My guess is there is some sort of short in the power distribution node... But this does not seem to be the only, and most major problem.

When the drive does work and get detected properly on POST, it does NOT show up in Windows Disk Managment. However, when booting off the WinXP CD, it does detect the drive, but says that setup cannot access this drive. Is the partition damaged or something? Can I fix this? The drive appears to be working and it shows properly in the POST as a 40GB drive...

I recall something with the MBR, a command you could do in DOS or something... Does anyone remember this?

BTW, the drive does not appear in FDISK. But it DOES appear in the windows device manager... But not in disk managment... So, something is going on, but the drive does work...

Any help is always appreciated. Thanks

EDIT: Something interesting... I installed Partition Magic 7 to see if it could detect the drive... and when I start it up it says

"Init failed: Error 100.

Partition table is bad"

SO... something is messed up here. What can I do?

Under Windows XP, you can restore the original MBR as follows:

Boot from the Windows XP CD, press the key "R" in the setup in order to start the
restoration console. Select your Windows XP installation from the list, and enter
the administrator password. Enter the command "FIXMBR" at the input prompt and
confirm the next question with "y". Finally, use "exit" to restart the computer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If that doesn't work, then I suspect that the HD has just gone bad

I will try that, sounds like it might work.

Thanks...

Well... Tried it. It can't find the OS, so it just goes to the repair consol.... typing in FIXMBR does nothing, just returns to the C: prompt with no response.

But I can hear the hard drive clicking, transferring data. is there another way to fix the MBR or file allocation tables?

You're telling me that fixmbr doesn't work, you're telling me that the drive is 'a couple of years old', and you're telling me that you've had some sort o power / cable problem. You also say that it's making noises... I don't think that PQ or changing fat32 to NTFS had much to do with it ... I think that you drive just decided to go bad... 8) If you'd made a rescue disk like PQ asks you to do, you could try that, but again, I think you got a deader ;(

One other outside possibility is that it's the ide connection on the motherboard. If you can get ahold of another drive you could check if you can access that.

Beleive me, those were the first things I tried. I've tried different cables, power connectors, even different computers! No go...

I tihnk the FAT is damaged or the MBR is damaged, or both.

The cables I am currently using are rounded IDE cables, and the power connectors have no externders on them. The connectors are fine, work great in all other drives.

fdisk /mbr

that will wipe the mbr in dos.

Try that.

Also you can use the WD diagnostic tools which can be very helpful


http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

ahhh, thats what i recognize... thanks! i will try that, hopfully it will work.

I may D/L the WD tools too, I formatted the disk a long time ago cause I thought i'd never need it... lol, how ironic.

thanks! i'll let ya know if it works

Damn it! I tried the fix mbr in DOS using Win98 boot CD... No work just said "No fixed disks present."

On to the WD tools... This is becoming very annoying...

Edit:

Well the diagnostic utility found the drive... this is what it said:

"UNKNOWN ERROR

ERROR/STATUS CODE: 0101"

So it looks like i'll be calling tech support. Hopfully they can help me out since the drive is still under warranty.

From the wd page: error 101 Unknown error. An unknown error has occurred during testing. This may be an anomaly. Check connections and retest. If the error repeats, replace the drive.

You should replace it. Even if it does work again I wouldn't rely on such a drive.

I have checked the connections, there appears to be no problems.

I have replaced the drive, I went out and bought a new 60GB Maxtor drive last night. But, I just HATE loosing a drive, especially if it has decent storage capacity, and is still under warranty. I will be calling WD within the next day or so when I get time.

It does look like a power issue, but it is NOT my power supply. I have tried this drive in 3 different computers, all with the same problem. a 300 watt, a 520 watt, and a 350 watt supply. I think it is something wrong with the actual HD. As I mentioned, the power distribution node could be damaged, a part that gives power to the rest of the HD.

It is not bad cabling either, I tried over 15 different IDE cables, the old 40-pins, 80-pin conductor ribbon cables, and even the new 80-pin rounded ones. Made no differeence.

I have tested it in 3 machines, I think the drive is damaged too far. I think I will have to contact WD, in hopes they can replace it at the very least.

I think that concludes this thread. Thanks for all the help guys, now I know what the problem is.

I have seen that before

A drive that would only power up every now and then.

Had to have it serviced, and they replaced it with a new one

My new server I just bought Had a bad 15k Cheetah in it, and they didn't have one in stock to replace it so they gave me a 10k 73gb drive

Well, I hope they will at least replace it, I have the data backed up, well, most of it. I dont want to loose 40GB, or, $80 rather is what it costs now.