hard drive not recognized by BIOS on soft reboot

[sic]

Hi,

I did a scandisk on my primary hard drive (I have two) and found some errors. The scan was still working when I left the house and when I came back I found that it had hung on reboot because it couldn't detect the primary hard drive (the primary drive has the only windows installation). I tried rebooting and again the BIOS would not detect it. Then I turned the computer fully off and when I turned it back on it detected both drives and was working normally. However, whenever I try to do a soft reboot I get the same error. Turning off the machine completely seems to correct the problem. The hard drive is only about 15 months old, although I've used the computer quite a bit, had to replace a fan the other day. I'm not sure if this is a sign that the hard drive is dying, or if I need to reformat the disk or what. I have little experience with hardware, so any suggestions for a novice would be welcome.


I think my anti-virus (PC-Cillin 2003)installation had become corrupted (this program folder was mentioned in the scandisk) and so I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it clean. I've done a virus check with the latest virus definitions and the computer seems to be virus-free. No effect on the problem at hand however.

Both hard drives are either Seagate or Maxtor (can't remember which) 40 gb 7200 rpm. Using Win 2k sp3 (although I don't think windows is the culprit, for once).

 

[mainegeek]

Try replacing the cmos battery.

 

[wolluf]

Do you mean chkdsk rather than scandisk? (win2k). NTFS or FAT32 filestore? Might be worth getting the drive manaufacturer's utility to check the drive (will be on their website), as it does sound like it may be damaged. I'd definitely make sure anything important is backed up.

Might be worth checking the physical connection of disk to motherboard (ie, IDE cable's ok, connectors firmaly attached).

 

[sic]

My Win2k OS is in Spanish (comprobación de errores is the name of the utility), so it may be chkdsk. I'm going to the seagate website (turns out the hd is a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV)to see if I can find a utility.

Would reformatting the drive fix this type of error, or does this sound like physical damage? I've been considering wiping out my OS and reformatting for some time now, because it is been just flaky enough to annoy, but not flaky enough to finally convince me to go through the hassle of reformatting. I install and uninstall programs frequently and probably have a truckload of lost .dlls floating around the system....

By the way, what is the cmos?

 

[sic]

oh I forgot to mention, this partition is NTFS...

 

[wolluf]

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CMOS.html

The Seagate utility should tell you if there is damage or not. A reformat/reinstall might resolve problems (unless of course, the problems are not with the drive, but other hardware...) - or you might need to completely wipe drive (binary zero-fill or similar).

 

[sic]

Well, I used a pretty cool online scan over at Seagate which told me that the drive was returning a SMART alert which, according to the utility, means that the drive can fail at any moment. Damn.

The utility also told me that the hd is still under warranty. They give me the option of exchanging my drive for a factory-repaired drive, but I have to pay the postage and they demand very specific packaging or they cancel the warranty... Sounds dicey, maybe they cancel warranties because they don't like the color of the box you send it to them in?

I think maybe I'll try reformatting the drive first, if you think that has a chance of resolving the problem. Hmmm, what is this binary-zero business?

 

[hddmechanic]

Manufacturers are good with warranties it has to be some noticable problem before they will cancel the warranty. You can recover bad sectors and fix smart errors by using a program call HDD Regeneration It recovers bad sectors and it doesn't destroy any data.

 

[sic]

Thanks hddmechanic,

I'm going to check out that program. I'll let you know how it works out for me....

 

[sic]

Well I used the program, to recover the bad sectors (less than 100 were found in 80 million sectors scanned) and it seemed to work perfectly although it took about 5.5 hours for a 40 gb hard drive. Then I went back to the seagate online check and unfortunately it is still throwing the same error. Drag, because the computer seems to be working fine. I put a new partition on the unused part of the disk and now the machine soft reboots no problem. But I guess I can't take the risk of the computer going down on me suddenly since I use it for work. Guess I´m going to buy a new hard drive and send this one to be exchanged.

thanks for the suggestions...

 

[bcastner]

Any claims that SMART errors are going to be repaired through a utility employing "magnetic refresh" strike me as both suspicious and specious.

I am not going to repeat here the nearly endless debate over Steve Gibson's earlier claims for his utility to perform the same operation. You can easily Google "Steve Gibson" and spend several days reading the debate.

If it was my drive and the manufacturer's diagnostic said that a SMART parameter(s) had exceeded its limit, I would do the warranty return. Many offer a "cross-ship" option, so that you receive the replacement drive and use the packaging materials to return the old one.

If you do not want to cross-ship, to obtain the packaging material go to your local computer shop and ask the techs for a spare box to do the return. You need an anti-static bag to put the drive in, and a styrofoam cradle to protect all sides of the drive. Fill out the website RMA form and enclose a copy.

 

[sic]

Yes, I found out that hdd regenertor does not in fact fix the smart errors and I most surely will do the warranty return. I'm thinking of buying a new hard drive anyway, so I'll just use the packing the new hard drive comes in to send my old one. Seagate's on-line diagnostics utility is pretty nifty, it even brought me right into the warranty valadition and RMA form after finding the errors. Can't say much for their product though, it only lasted 14 months before giving me errors....