I just tried to install my old 10 Gig (Maxtor)hard drive as a slave to my other 10 Gig (same model Maxtor)hard drive on my IDE 0 cable. Both jumpers on the drives are set correctly (Master and Slave)but when I booted up after the install I had nothing but problems. First thing that was weird was the Scan disk program started scanning on what it called my E: drive (which I know is my CDRW drive in Windows) but scandisk considered it my newly installed hard drive. The second thing is that after scan disk was 32% complete it said that it had encountered a bad cluster would I like to try to continue running scandisk. I selected to continue but it only froze at that percentage. The whole time that it was frozen I heard a repetative clicking sound. I had this happen before with this drive (which also has windows 98 on it) but I just put the other 10 Gig drive in and installed Windows 98 on it. Is the drive dead or should I try to wipe out the partition with Partition Magic. I think that this might be some kind of hardware failure with the drive but I wanted to get some other opinions.

Thanks,
ditmx6

hard disks always get priority in drive letters over ATAPI devices; so when you added the new hard drive, your system automatically bumped your ATAPI ( CDROM ) devices down a letter.

If it's making a clicking noise, and scan disk is reporting a lot of bad clusters, or just freezing while trying to access the drive-it's %99 for sure dead.



------------------
iisbob

There is no such thing as a stupid question; just an improper one.-my own belief

Yes, that clicking sound is familar to me. Trust iisbob, just as I trusted mjc. These folks know!

Thats what I was afraid of. Thanks for the replies.

I'm not doubting the masters but I have a HDD with bad clusters and when ScanDisk gets to them, it seems to freeze but it states trying to recover clusters and if you wait long enough it makes progress VERY slowly. I would suggest you try one more time before giving up the ghost. Mine has around 7 to 10 bad spots and still works. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

------------------
Journey on through ages gone, to the centre of the earth.
Past rocks of quartz and granite, which gave mother nature birth.
Burial ground of ancient man, his life no more is seen.
A journey through his time unknown, I wonder where he's been.
The shore now gone behind the hills, a forest in our sight,
Rocks and distant mountains, bathed in waves of blinding light.
Forests from a far gone time, no living man has seen,
A private prehistoric world, for you and I, a dream...
(Rick Wakeman: Journey to the center of the earth 1974)

FTT, 7-10 is not all that many, but I would keep an eye on it to see if more start cropping up, becuase once they start it is kind of like mold on a slice of bread, they spread quickly....

Also the location of the errors is important, if they are at the beginning of the drive then they are more serious ( with sector 0 being bad the drive is dead), the middle or end you can partition them out. And some of the drive diagnostic software from the manufacturere can "remap" a limited number of bad sectors...but the same warnings apply.



------------------
mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

I have a bad habit of getting rather ijmpatient or intolerant of things that are not as they should be. A CD-ROM I have on the machine in mention has the habit (probably the software) of spinning up to 12x or whatever and not responding to the eject button. Well in my inexperience, I figured if I disconnected the power it would slow down and then reconnect and eject the disk. Got a BSOD on that one! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif Put it all back together and that's when scandisk found all the errors. I even had to reinstall the OS because of lost files and probably some drivers as well. Since then there have been no more sectors lost, just once in a while Windows will install over the bad area and I'll have to figure out what and install it reinstall it effectively putting it in another sector. Oh well as I always say, A hard lesson is a best learned lesson...

ditmx6,

Can you gain access to the drive to run POWERMAX (http://www.maxtor.com/products/DiamondMax/techsupport/TechnicalProcedures/20014.htm)?

------------------
May all your dealings in life be win/win!


Whyzman
----------------------
Reserved for Punishing Humor...A Pessimist's blood is always B-negative!

FTT, yep, you spiked it...the surge damaged that area of the drive. You are very lucky that it didn't damage the heads in the process. In that case it should live for a while, wounded though it is. If the dmage is clustered in one are you can probably partition it out and eliminiate the need for the messing around (or do a full surface scan and have scandisk mark them as bad)

------------------
mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

I was able to run the Powermax Utility by Maxtor and it reported the following error codes:
S01
R03
Anyway I was not able to find them on Maxtors website. I do think that the drive is dead though since it could not read the clusters.

Is there any warranty left on it (most drives have a three year warranty)?

If so you should be able to get an RMA on it. I beleive that an R03 is a returnable error...

------------------
mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

I think that I bought the drive in 98 but I'll have to check if there is a warenty on it or not.