[Fwd: Re: Hardware/Windows question]

[Keith' Weatherhead]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Hardware/Windows question
Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 17:36:01 -0500
From: Keith' Weatherhead <keithw at ddltd.com>
To: filepro-list1 <filepro-list at celestial.com>
References: <43496B20.8010109 at verizon.net> 
<20051009161609.A15858 at iglou.com> 
<20051009171841.R16956 at cgi.jachomes.com>

Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 04:16:09PM -0400, Fairlight wrote:
> 
>>I am unsure if you can even get the MBR relocated with a bad sector
>>mapping.  Generally by the time a drive does something like this to me,
>>it's swapped outta there for a reliable one.
> 
> You can't.  The MBR is epxected to be in it's location by the BIOS
> code, which doesn't know from remapping (minor lie: if a SCSI drive
> relocates 0/0 without telling you, you'll never notice).
> 
>>It's possible to try rewriting the MBR, but I'd advise against it.  If it's
>>really that section of disk that's bad, if it fails it will not boot again,
>>period.  Best off backing up what you can and replacing the drive.
> 
> If that's crazy problematic, though, you might grab Spinrite 6 (which
> is only about $70, I think) and run it against the drive on Level 5.
> 
> I've had Spinrite recover drives that just would not work at all; it
> will just keep reading until it gets the sector, on it's highest
> setting.  I once ran it to recover an un-backed up ST512 10MB drive on
> a PC-XT.  It took *10 days*.  (Yes, I put it on a UPS :-)
> 
> It got every sector back.
> 
> Course, I backed everything up and moved it to a new drive *anyway*,
> but...
> 
> Steve Gibson is a self important a-hole... but he writes some *damn*
> fine assembly code.
> 
> Cheers,
> -- jra

YAPP (Yet Another Possible Problem) has to do with whether the motor
is reaching full speed.   When you turn it on do you hear any
clicking or can you hear when the drive revs up and the reads
actually jumping out over the disk surface?  Disks now days are much
quite then their older brethren, but most other than far more
expensive than are normally packaged, with a NB... can be heard in a
relatively quiet environment.

The electronics packs are very sensitive to whether the palters are
spinning at the proper speed.  I believe you said it was a NB so the
speeds are something like 4500, 5400, 7200 rpms.  It can be a little
off lower or higher, but it is a tight tolerance or the electronics
will not be able to read/write to the drive.  If the spatters are
not within the tolerance, the heads WON'T LOAD.

Depending on whether you are up to it or not... you might remove the
drive from the NB (not a hard process but not for the faint of heart
either).  At this point I would procure another HD and I like a
product called Drive Copy among others, I have two connectors for
putting a NB on a Desktop (converts the power and signal cables into
the 2 normal connections for a Desktop system) and I put the 2
drives on any available desktop.  Normally for this surgery, I set
the BIOS to boot only from a CD-Rom (and floppy) and I put the Drive
Copy CD or I use the set of floppies that can be created with Drive
Copy and I copy the entire "bad" drive to a "new" drive.

A nice benefit at this point in time is that the new drive can be
substantially bigger and Drive Copy will Re-Partition, Copy and
Adjust, so that when you are finished and reinsert the new drive
back into the NB you also have more space if it is needed.

As long as you can get the drive to come ready, and can reliably
read from it, the whole operation can only take a couple of hours.

If you cannot get the drive working without a ton of fuss then
Spinrite is another possibility, too.  I any case, if you get the
system booted up and you are not going to IMMEDIATELY try any of
these ideas, DO NOTHING ELSE OTHER THAN GET A BACKUP OF ANY FILES
THAT YOU CARE ABOUT.

Regards,
Keith

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Keith F. Weatherhead                   keithw at ddltd.com

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