Hard drive stopped working.

[willjm3931]

I have about a one year old maxtor hard drive that just stopped working. Went to the computer one time and there was like a dos cursor. The drive won't boot. I put it in another computer both as master and slave. Won't boot as master but can access it as slave. I tried reloading XP to start from scratch but keep getting errors messages that this file isn't found and that file isn't found. Did the drive die or could there be something infecting it?

 

[Kornowski]

It does sound as if your HDD is dead, I don't know why it would die adter only a year though, I've had my WD 40 GB for about 3 years now

It's get everything you want off it and then try putting Windows and other stuff on it, or, if it doesn't work but you can get to it as a second drive use it as storage, but not for stuff that you will NEED.

 

[PC eye]

If you are readily able to access the drive when slaved to another it's most likely the boot sector information that was lost and not a drive failure. It certainly won't boot as master in another case where you would need a fresh installation of Windows there.

The thing to try since you have the installation disk onhand is to put it back in the first case as master and boot with the XP cd to the recovery console. Once there try the "Fixmbr" and "Fixboot" commands. These will see a new boot sector wriitten. You may have a bad ide cable there to consider after a year's time if the drive simply hasn't lost information. A repair install would be the next step if the two commands used at the recovery console fail to see results. If you hear any clicking sounds from the drive that would be the time to plan on a drive replacement. That indicates the read-write head isn't floating above the drive's magnetic platters inside heading for a ccccrasshhh!