Hard Drive dead?

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peergynt_lwb

New Member
When I boot to CMOS, the drive's values are different from what they should be. For example, CMOS states that it's a 4 GB drive whereas it's actually a 20 GB drive.

I've tried placing the drive on all available channels primary1, secondary0 and secondary1. Also, I cleared CMOS between each change and tried both Cable Select and Mas/Sla configurations. The result is always the same.

So do you think it a goner?
 
disk dead?

The computer is a 6-year-old Dell 500SC Server. It might even be a bit older. The disk originally shipped with the machine.

I added all bios updates and also added a new drive and new CD device. Everything works fine, except this disk. It looks like this:

Primary0 -- new disk (WD80)
Primary1 -- new CD-RW (Samsung)

Secondary0 -- original disk (WD20, works fine)
Secondary1 -- original disk (WD20, doesn't work fine)

Again, I tried the disk in all positions except Primary0.
 
Hmm... Well first I'd make sure it's not capped in any way. Some drives have jumper settings that'll cap them at certain sizes for older drives(I'm thinking it's usally around 8-9G, but it's worht a check...)

Seeing as you apparently have another similar drive working, this probably also isn't a problem, but are you 100% sure the settings are in the BIOS correctly for the drive. That or that it's set to AUTO?

Umm...I guess finally, be sure the jumper is correct... If all this fails, I'd keep the drive handy and try it one last time in another computer just to be 100% sure it's dead...
 
Dead

Yes, I've done all that. Everything is set as AUTO and jumpers are correct. I even tried running Dell's diagnostic tools on the drive, but the test couldn't proceed.

I'm disappointed because I was planning to mirror the two 20GB drives. Now I need to buy two whole new drives (min size seems to be about 80GB) and mirror them instead.

Thanks for the suggestions though.
 
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