Primary hard disk drive 0 Failure

amodoko

Member
Hi guys, got another computer that has been sitting around my place for about a year or two and thought I would get it ready to give to a friend of mine since it is a bit old. It is a Dell Dimension 2400 Desktop.

I remember it working at one time, but when I went to start it up it gave me the error: "Primary hard disk drive 0 failure" and to strike F1 to retry or F2 to enter setup utility. Whenever I retry I get the same error, except one time after messing around with it I got the error "Primary drive 0 not found." But now it is just saying "Primary hard disk drive 0 failure."

Anyways, I opened up the desktop, and I removed and reinstalled the same cables and power supply to the hard drive to see if it was a loose cable. I also removed the IDE cable from the motherboard and reinstalled it. Still get the same error code.

I looked this up online and I read it may be an issue with the platters being stuck in the hard drive and to smack the hard drive a bit, which I did lightly, and still no change. Othes have different opinions as to what is wrong.

I then went and tried to see if I could use the Windows XP cd to format the hard drive for fun. It loaded the blue screen for Windows Setup and then after some time processing some stuff, it gave me the BSOD with STOP code of 0x0000007F

The hard drive is a 3.5 series Maxtor that is 40GB with Fireball 3 ATA/133 HDD.

Do you think the hard drive is toast and I need a new one? Do you think it needs a new cable? Not sure what the next step should be so I'd appreciate any helpl. Thanks for your time in advance.
 
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Hard drive is shot. Either get a new one or frankly the pc is so old its not really worth it.
 
Perfect, thanks John! I assumed so considering it said "primary disk failure," haha, but just wanted to check. I was considering tossing it but the hard drives are so cheap on ebay for this old model I may as well just get one for $15 and give the desktop away to my buddy. Thanks again for your help, I will be getting a new hard drive soon then.
 
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