HDD Error ..... HELP!

[Brave01Heart]

Hi

My daughter uses her Packard Bell computer for her school studies and the other day when she turned on the computer, the computer would not complete POST.

I have since checked it and the drive is shown during POST, under "PRI MASTER", it shows the following (I pressed "PAUSE" so that I could read the message):

"Ultra DMA Mode 4 S.M.A.R.T. capable but command failed!

After pressing "ESC", it then showed "PRI MASTER HDD ERROR".

The drive is also shown in the BIOS and I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting the IDE cable and power lead and also changed the IDE cable for a brand new one but I still get the same error.

Now, my daughter has her school course work on the drive and I would like to know if the drive is beyond saving or is there some way that the course work can be saved and if so, what needs to be done and is any software required?

BTW, the hdd is a WD 20GB UDMA4 and the system board is a Gigabyte Intel baord.

Regards

Brave01Heart

[tubebuoy]

"the computer would not complete POST."

Post? I've never heard this term before. Please elaborate. And what OS is being used?


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[Shiromagius]

POST is the process of checking ram and detecting your devices attached to your primary/secondary channels and other channels you may have. It happens everytime you boot your computer. It happens before loading your OS, so it sounds like a BIOS setting problem. I would check your BIOS settings and set stuff to Auto on your primary channel (as opposed to fixed values), and also check any UDMA settings in your BIOS. Sounds like the BIOS isnt set up to accept such cool drives

[roadworker]

POST= Power On Self Test.....

Try to acces the drive with an Ontrack EasyRecovery or Runtimes GetDataBack boot floppy......if you still can't acces the drive,remove it and attach it to another system to see if you can acces the drive from another os....

[war59312]

Try turning off S.M.A.R.T on the drive.

[Brave01Heart]

Hi guys


Many thanks for all of your replies.

* I tried turning off S.M.A.R.T. but still got the error message.

* Also attached the drive to another system but got the message; "Windows halted, System error" and when I attached it a SLAVE and booted into XP, only the working system drive is shown in My Computer and in Control Panel/Disk Management - so still can't access it.

* Changed data cables - no change.

* Tried 'freezing' the drive and then reconnecting it - no change - same error.

* Tried tapping the drive 'gently' but firmly on the top but made no difference.

* Used WD disk utilty and it came up with a S.M.A.R.T. error.

* Although the drive is shown in the BIOS correctly and also during POST as the SLAVE drive, when I used boot floppy and run FDISK, it reported that no drives were connected.

With reference to "roadworker" suggestion about trying "Runtimes GetDataBack" boot floppy - everything else has failed so far but it's worth a try, but where do I get this utility from?

Regards

Brave01Heart

[DoG]

The only other method i have had some limited success with was to buy a cheap external usb drive bay and to put the drive in there. The external bays don't usually support smart status checking so they can sometimes give you access to an otherwise unreadable drive.

You can get a trial version of Runtimes GetDataBack from here : http://www.runtime.org/