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snoutmeat · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

Greetings-

Thank you for taking the time to read. My dad called me a few days ago saying that his computer wasn't working. I showed up and he was getting a "boot disk error". I looked in the BIOS, which didn't see the hard drive. I tried replacing the cable, but still no luck. I put in a new hard drive and reinstalled Windows; the computer is working again. Now he wants the data from his old hard drive!

The drive: Maxtor 4D080H4 80 GB ATA
The symptoms: drive bearings have been getting noisier over the years (drive is louder than a new drive -- it has a high-pitched whine when it is spinning), but it's not making any unusual noises and the whine isn't any worse than it has been for the past 6 months at least. The drive is now in an external enclosure. When I turn it on, it spins up, the heads unlock, and I can hear the head reading data for a moment. But that's it. When the drive was in my dad's computer, neither the BIOS nor windows recognized the drive.
After I installed a new drive as master on the primary channel and installed Windows on the new drive, I tried setting the jumpers on the old dead drive to "slave" and attaching the dead drive to my father's computer. When I tried this, the computer got hung on its Hewlett-Packard splash screen and would not boot.

I was thinking of trying a PCB swap, and there's even a guy about 80 miles away who sells the PCB on Ebay, but I'm not sure my symptoms are right. It sounds like most of the people having success with a PCB swap have obvious physical damage to their PCBs or don't even get their drives to spin up.

If my drive sounds ok -- it's spinning up, head is unlocking, and it even sounds like data is getting read -- but the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive what's the most likely problem? Is there additional troubleshooting I can do?

Thank you,
Shane in Seattle

PS one other weird item -- coincidence? When I installed the new (320 GB) drive in my dad's machine, one of the first things I did was to transfer the data from my dad's 2nd drive (a 45 GB drive) to the new 320 GB drive. 2 days later, my dad calls again to say the PC isn't working right, is running really slowly, and is making a funny noise from the general area of the hard drive. I assumed that the new drive was defective, but it turns out that the old drive was causing the trouble. I unplugged the old 45 GB drive, and the computer behaved normally. I plugged the 45 GB drive back in, rebooted, and got a "SMART" warning that the drive was in imminent danger of failing. I tried copying a file from the new 320 GB drive to the old drive and got a drive error -- "cyclic redundancy check". The drive was also making noise like it was repeatedly trying to read some data. I replaced that drive as well (fortunately, no data was lost as I'd already moved the data off it). Now my dad's machine is running like a champ. His old 80 and 45 GB drives have been replaced with 320 GB and 160 GB drives. What are the odds of two hard drives failing within 48 hours of each other? The drives are both 5 years old, and were both noisy when spinning. I wonder if I did something to speed up the death of the drive, but I unplugged the power and observed static electricity precautions while working. I also noticed that the drives failed in very different ways -- the first drive sounds fine, but isn't recognized by the BIOS. The 2nd drive heads are making noises, the drive is seen by BIOS, and most of the data can be seen, though it sometimes has cyclic redundancy check errors. Coincidence? What are the odds that some problem with the PC led to the death of both drives? Should I be worried that the machine is about to fry the 2 new drives too?

Final question: I've looked all over for a "What's wrong with my hard drive?" troubleshooting guide; the only guides I've found have focused on things like checking the ATA cable. I haven't found any guides for people whose hard drives are dead to help determine whether the problem is most likely to be with the read/write heads, with the PCB, etc, etc. Is there such a guide?

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:53 pm Post subject:

You need a new computer.

Your drives got too old and dying.

You will need a help of a pro. to get your data back.
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snoutmeat · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

Thanks for the reply.

Why would you say I need a new computer? The machine now has 2 new hard drives, and the CPU and RAM are plenty for the web surfing and word processing that my father does. The optical drive and monitors have been updated as well.

You say that I need the help of a professional to get the data back...do you have a diagnosis for a hard drive that sounds fine, but isn't recognized by BIOS?

Thanks.

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 12:16 am Post subject:

Let me refrase.
I suggest that you get a new computer. You can buy one from $200.00-$300.00.
Everything wears out sooner or later, older drives much slower due to that.

I have special tools/equipment to work with drives in any condition, that is why I recommend to find a pro.
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snoutmeat · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

OK, thanks. I think the computer is ample for my dad's needs, and many components are now new, so there's not much point in getting him a new machine.

I understand that you (and data recovery pros) have many tools at their disposal to work with a dead drive. We're hoping to avoid that approach because the estimates on the web range from many hundred up to more than a thousand dollars, and the data's not worth that much to him. If we can get a PCB for <$50, swap it out, and get the data back, that's worthwhile to him. If he has to spend $800, he'll start restoring the data from the various CDs and DVDs he's backed it up on and live without the items that he never backed up.

It seems that hard drives typically fail in one of several ways...they may completely stop spinning and maybe have obvious burning damage to the board, which would indicate a bad PCB; they may make bad clicking noises and generate read/write errors, which (I think) often indicates physical problems with the platters themselves. I have not yet come across anyone who has had a drive simply stop communicating with the computer, though it still sounds like it's operating properly. Because the symptoms seem to be unusual, I had assumed that this would help to indicate the probable problem. Is that not the case? Have you encountered drives that sound like they're operating normally, but aren't recognized by BIOS?

Thanks!

snoutmeat · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

For those of you keeping score (or for people searching this in the future):

--drive sounds normal when spinning up (bearings are a little noisy due to the age of the drive, but sound the same as they did a month ago) -- platters spin up, heads unlock, disc makes the noise of a batch of data being read.

--drive is not recognized in XP, and is also not recognized in the computer's BIOS.

--I purchased a matching PCB from Ebay, but drive behaves in exactly the same way whichever PCB is installed.

--I tried putting it in the freezer, but no luck.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

hddstudio · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:38 am Post subject:

Yes, It's called Service Area problem.

Search Google for "maxtor romulus"
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snoutmeat · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

I'd noticed postings about the Romulus problems elsewhere. From what I've read, the drives exhibiting this problem suddenly tell the BIOS that they're a different type of drive. That's not my problem. The BIOS isn't recognizing the drive at all. Am I missing something?

hddstudio · Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2009 4:13 am Post subject:

download MHDD from www.hddguru.com and boot the system (with the problem hdd attached to the system as secondary master), after entering MHDD, press F2, it will show you "Maxtor Romulus"
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