I ruined an IDE hard drive by powering it off during boot up.
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Posted by DJW on March 9, 2008, 1:09 pm
Please log in for more thread options confirmed by the manufacture Hitachi because of the error code I got. It was in a PC has anyone heard if the same is true for a Mac with an IDE drive? I have used SCSI and never damaged one but not sure if one ever lost power in a SCSI only machine Mac or PC at startup. | |||||||||||||
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Posted by kony on March 9, 2008, 4:41 pm
Please log in for more thread options >I ruined an IDE hard drive by powering it off during boot up.
Define ruined. That should not *break* any hard drive, though it may corrupt the data. If the drive can't be partitioned and formatted now, you might need to zero out the drive (overwrite all areas with zeros so it's not logically confusing software used to partition it). >That is
>confirmed by the manufacture Hitachi because of the error code I got. What error code and what (software?) was used to retrieve this code? If it wasn't the manufacturer diagnostics utility, be sure to run all the tests it offers. >It was in a PC has anyone heard if the same is true for a Mac with an
>IDE drive? I have used SCSI and never damaged one but not sure if one >ever lost power in a SCSI only machine Mac or PC at startup. It's not true for any remotely modern drive in any kind of computer, only data loss would result if anything. If the drive is now completely inoperable, cannot be recovered at all then tell us what caused the power to go off. Was it a power supply failure, AC mains power cutout, or something else? If you can isolate that the drive worked properly right before power went off then ceased to be accomodating to a zero-fill, partition and format, it would seem the drive failed but it would be coincidence if it happened at the moment the power went off. If the system shut itself off, that might have happened because the drive shorted out, or the PSU went out of it's regulation spec thus sending a damaging voltage to the drive. | |||||||||||||
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Posted by Rookie on March 9, 2008, 8:20 pm
Please log in for more thread options 4ax.com:
> On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 10:09:48 -0700 (PDT), DJW
> >>I ruined an IDE hard drive by powering it off during boot up.
>
> Define ruined. That should not *break* any hard drive, > though it may corrupt the data. If the drive can't be > partitioned and formatted now, you might need to zero out > the drive (overwrite all areas with zeros so it's not > logically confusing software used to partition it). > > > >>That is
>>confirmed by the manufacture Hitachi because of the error code I got. >
> What error code and what (software?) was used to retrieve > this code? If it wasn't the manufacturer diagnostics > utility, be sure to run all the tests it offers. > > >>It was in a PC has anyone heard if the same is true for a Mac with an
>>IDE drive? I have used SCSI and never damaged one but not sure if one >>ever lost power in a SCSI only machine Mac or PC at startup. >
> It's not true for any remotely modern drive in any kind of > computer, only data loss would result if anything. > > If the drive is now completely inoperable, cannot be > recovered at all then tell us what caused the power to go > off. Was it a power supply failure, AC mains power cutout, > or something else? If you can isolate that the drive worked > properly right before power went off then ceased to be > accomodating to a zero-fill, partition and format, it would > seem the drive failed but it would be coincidence if it > happened at the moment the power went off. If the system > shut itself off, that might have happened because the drive > shorted out, or the PSU went out of it's regulation spec > thus sending a damaging voltage to the drive. > > In that case, I would take a chance changing the drive board with an identical one. Wouldn't that offer good possibility of success? | |||||||||||||
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Posted by kony on March 10, 2008, 5:45 am
Please log in for more thread options On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:20:25 +0100 (CET), Rookie
>In that case, I would take a chance changing the drive board with an
>identical one. Wouldn't that offer good possibility of success? Yes if it were a power surge the circuit board is probably what was damaged, but why bother? Unless there was valuable data loss and yet, no funds to pay for a professional recovery center, you'd have to have a working drive to know the board is good and then might as well just use the other drive - and send in the original for warranty replacement if under warranty still. | |||||||||||||
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Posted by DJW on March 10, 2008, 11:47 am
Please log in for more thread options > On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:20:25 +0100 (CET), Rookie
> > >In that case, I would take a chance changing the drive board with an
> >identical one. Wouldn't that offer good possibility of success? >
> Yes if it were a power surge the circuit board is probably > what was damaged, but why bother? Unless there was valuable > data loss and yet, no funds to pay for a professional > recovery center, you'd have to have a working drive to know > the board is good and then might as well just use the other > drive - and send in the original for warranty replacement if > under warranty still. First off this drive that went bad had no data on it I care about recovering. Second it was a vintage 1999 6.5 GB Hitachi brand. Third the incident happened to a laptop that had a dead main battery I inadvertently unplugged the transformer brick during startup. Also I never had a problem with this HD before and it did not sound that it may be heading for a breakdown. The bios reported that it could see the drive and had all correct as far as its specs but after trying numerous things like FDISK and a reformat plus trying to write zeros to the drive all commands were refused. I am not that DOS savvy but with help and answers from a PC news group I tried numerous command strings. NOTHING WORKED THERE WAS NO WAY TO ACCESS THE DRIVE. There was a suggestion to get an adapter and put it in one of my desktop Pcs but that was more work than I cared to do. The error replies came via the computer's rom or windows floppy and or install CD plus Hitachi's drive utility. I got a bunch of different errors, IDE error, no FAT or Fat32 partition found, etc. Hitachi's drive fitness test utility did give me an error code number, which I relayed to Hitachi's tech department below, was their answer to two emails I wrote them: If the hard drive was in the process of booting up and the power was cut it could have caused issues with the hard drive with the read/write head. It could have also cause a power corruption error. Unfortunately those hard drives are out of warranty and we do not have way to replace that hard drive. If Drive Fitness Test has come back with the 0x75 error there isn't much more that can happen with that hard drive. I am sorry but the 0x75 error is a mechanical failure and there are parts inside of the hard drive that are not functioning. There isn't a way to repair the hard drive and we are unable to repair the hard drive as well. The 0x75 error doesn't specify what mechanical part has failed but it is hard to say that a IDE controller issue will cause a problem with a hard drive. I am sorry that we cannot help with fixing your hard drive but with that error the hard drive is beyond repair of any kind. The only reason I asked this group the question is like you seem to be thinking from most of the reply above is what I thought. NO WAY A POWERING OFF COULD PHYICALLY RUIN THE HARD DRIVE INSIDE. Now scrambling the OS code or maybe the for lake of a better word the HD's table of contents maybe. But I assumed scandisk or a reformat plus re- partitioning would clean things up for a reinstall of the system (windows 98SE) So my question to this group or maybe an insight to it is has anyone encountered this or watch out not to do what I did. I have been using computers both Mac and PC for years and years. I have seen and heard some strange things but this was a new one for me. I really don't think Hitachi was trying to sell me a new drive or passing the buck which I think we all know goes on in the computer world with software companies blaming hardware and vise versa. Sending a person off in a circle to try and get an answer of fix to a problem. | |||||||||||||
