From: Karen_Roman
- Check CMOS settings to make sure the drive setting are what they should be the CMOS battery could be dead or the user may have changed the settings. A bad hard drive could cause the Autodetect to misread settings.
- Boot from a floppy disk and run fdisk/mbr to restore the backup copy of the master boot record.
- Image the drive with drive copy program to a new drive.
- It's possible the HDD controller is bad. Try the drive in another machine.
- Boot from a floppy attach to a network drive or have a secondary drive installed and if you can access the data copy it off to there.
- The drive could have a stiction problem. Tap it gently on the sides, preferably with a rubber mallet.
From: Alan Gates
As "unscientific" as this sounds, I have found that rapping the drive case a couple of times sometimes allows the drive to come up. I have had several experiences in the past like this. Sometimes the drive is having trouble "spinning up." Obviously, the drive is on its last legs but a rap on the drive case will sometimes free it to spin up. This will allow the system to boot so the data can be backed up before the drive goes into the trash...
From: Bob Barker
I have found on more than a few occasions that older disks can develop a sticking problem. I believe it is a combination of weak motor and surface-to-surface tension between the disk and heads. This problem usually shows up on older disks that have been running a few years (usually 24 hours a day) and then shut down for service or other reasons.
- When you try to start up again, the disk will not spin and you get disk errors trying to boot. After checking for the usual problems (power, cables, jumpers, etc.) and finding that the drive was in fact not spinning, I have had great success jarring the disk with my palm (of my hand, not my PDA). I some times have to be a little more violent to get it to start but I have never had to use a hammer.
- I would be careful using this method if the data on the disk must be recovered at any cost which I would then send to On-Track or some other expensive data recovery company.
- I have found this problem mostly with older servers, but a few weeks ago I ran into the same thing on a two-year-old Compaq IDE drive that was only used a few hours a day.
From: Earle Pearce
When a drive is really gone cannot be read at all due to a physical failure, I employ a trick that has yet to fail me.
- Install the replacement as an additional drive.
- Remove the bad drive and smite it firmly on both edges (bang it on something solid)!
- Reinstall it, reboot, and it will work long enough to get the data copied to the replacement drive.
- I haven't had the opportunity to check this step yet but I think it should work. If it's the boot drive that's bad, mirror the boot partition to the replacement drive, then break the mirror, remove the bad drive rejumper, and boot to the new one.
