HD Issues

Remove all ads!

Hey.

I've hacked my old PII to pieces some time ago (I somewhat ended up needing the hard drive it once had), and I've been trying to wire it to another computer... but there's a problem.

I wire the thing to an IDE cable, pop the power in, and all goes well... but when I turn on the power, the LED under the damn thing repeatedly flashes five times, and the comp simply refuses to boot - basically, I'm stuck with a black window and a stupid white bar flashing endlessly. Nothing's written, just the damn bar flashing, and nothing else happens. Just the black screen and flashing bar.

I know the damn flashing LED means something... but I have no damn idea as to what it means.

The drive's a dinosaur - a Quantum Fireball EL 5.2 GB. Normally I couldn't care less about this old piece of trash, but I happen to need some of the data it contains, and I'm kinda screwed.

I've checked and rechecked the jumpers, and according to the drawing on the drive, all is fine... so what's the deal with this dinosaur?

 

I can't help you with the no booting problem, but I can give you another idea. For just over $20 you can get an external USB to IDE 'dongle' that lets you connect a bare IDE drive to the USB port of your new PC. It comes with a power supply to run the HD and the adapter usually powers from the USB port. The newer models can do parallel IDE and SATA. I own a couple (one PATA and one PATA/SATA) and they work well. You have to be sure to set the HD to 'master' and be careful plugging in the adapter into the HD so you don't bend the pins. The adapter is handy to use old HD's as backups - kinda like a tape drive.
Here are some examples:

link

[ October 10, 2006, 15:22: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

The best advice I can give is to go to the manufacturer's website (or contact them) and see if you can't find out what the flashing LED means.

Failing that. Chas's suggestion is a good one. Just because it can't bood doesn't mean it's dead. The MBR or some other crucial boot file just might be corrupted. Hooking it up as an USB drive just might cure your problem. The Bytecc BT-200 (top of the page Chas linked to) is actually the one I've been thinking about buying.

 

I brought the HD to my buddy who's been dabbling in computers for some eight years, and we triple-checked everything: jumpers, IDE cables, yet the damn thing isn't even detected, which leads me to say it's probably busted. It's not the MBR, because the drive would still be detected, and it's not. The damn LED flashing five times maddens me... WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?

 

Contact the manufacturer...or go to their website and look around for a manual for the drive.

Failing that, you could always throw the drive at a brick wall. It won't fix the problem, but it *will* make you feel better!

 

One question, does the BIOS even start with the messages on the screen and such, or does the LED immediatly start flashing?
If it is the former then I can't tell, but if it is latter then I think it is a power problem.

When the BIOS detects some simple errors like multiple active partitions or conflicting MBRs, it writes a message to the screen.
But it doesn't, that could be because the CPU hasn't even started executing the BIOS code.

Basically what happens on startup:
1. Power unit starts up and checks all the voltages, if that goes well then a pin is set on the CPU.
2. CPU loads the BIOS code from ROM and starts executing.
3. BIOS writes messages to the screen and detects amongst others the MBR and with it the active partition.

Apparently, the system doesn't even get further than 1.
What I'd suggest is that you check if the PSU can handle the system, maybe unplugging some other devices while leaving the Disk plugged will give some more clues.

 

Everything works well, until the BIOS gets to the detection of IDE drives... my other HD is detected in a split second, the other one (the one that has my data) doesen't detect at all, and there's this annoying LED flashing underneath it.

The comp still can boot and start Windows thanks to the healthy HD, but I cannot access the other drive. Trying to wire it on it's own IDE cable changes nothing - it's just not detected, be it slave, master or standalone. I'm dropping by my old school this week, maybe one of my old teachers could lend me a hand with this issue. Failing that, I have sharpened my nice, shiny axe.

 

Quick follow-up - brought the hard drive to one of my old teachers, and he inspected it closely. He says it's not the innerwork of the HD who's busted, because it still runs just as great, although the plates rotates a pretty slowly... he suspects the problem lies with the circuit board of the HD, and believes that just swapping them will allow my hard drive do resurrect for as long as I need to backup all critical data I had. But he says that it might not work whatsoever... but he happens to have one of those hard drives of the same model than mine laying around, so it's worth a try.