- Confused by temporary hdd failure
- Posted by Paul on November 4th, 2003
My daughter's away at college. She called me and told me she booted up her
PC (uses Win98SE) and encountered an error message that said (paraphrasing):
"primary hard drive failure" or "failed to find primary hard drive." At any
rate, it appeared to her that the hdd had "crashed," so she thought...
I had a friend pick it up and try to check it out at his home. However, he
told me it booted just fine for him, though in safe mode. He said he
eventually got it to boot in Windows mode without any further problems.
What might have been the problem? Is this the sign of a loose connection, or
perhaps a hdd going bad (but not yet there), etc?
--
Paul R
- Posted by Paul on November 4th, 2003
By "power connection," did you mean the PC's power supply cable that
connects to the back of the drive?
"Barry OGrady" <god_freee_jones@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4n9fqv0e63loa8qmbpa6begthktt813u6g@4ax.com...
- Posted by Rod Speed on November 4th, 2003
Paul <prosete@STICKERworldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:dTMpb.26630$Ec1.2454976@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Unfortunately for you, that particular symptom can be due to a
variety of things, none of which are that easy to identify remotely.
Yes, it can certainly be due to that, either the power
connector on the drive itself where the little metal tunnels
the pins go into can open up over time, or even just
a loose ribbon cable etc. Certainly worth trying a different
power connector, say from one of the cdrom drives etc.
Yes, it can certainly be caused by that too.
It can also be due to the motherboard going bad, or the power supply.
Or just a flakey ribbon cable. That one is cheap to try.
The only viable approach is to check the easiest to check first
and move thru the possibilitys if it keeps behaving like that.
Certainly worth running the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic
on the drive to see if the drive is reporting itself as going bad.
Turn SMART on in the motherboard bios for the same reason.
Obviously if you can swap the hard drive into another system
easily it would be worth trying that if nothing is obviously loose
and the diagnostic comes up clean. See if the fault moves with the
hard drive basically. Not necessarily that easy in your situation tho.
If those cheap checks dont fix it, I'd normally swap
the power supply next and the motherboard last.
Obviously if its overclocked, try running within specs etc.
