Forum Home
Press F1
 
Thread ID: 74152 2006-11-13 04:19:00 Possibly and most likely a dead HDD. But how does it affect XP? CCF (6760) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
498675 2006-11-13 04:19:00 Hi all

Just yesterday I found that my 120GB SATA HDD died, previously the files on the HDD were becoming un-readable though it was only about a good 2% of the 110GB files that I had on there. I'm not going to ask how to recover the files on the HDD as I know this question has been asked many many times. And it seems people always give the same answer. However would been keen to know if theres any 'new' ways or tips in possibly getting a dead HDD to work for atleast an hour or so. However my main question is really with the dead SATA plugged in my system, it takes almost forever for my WinXP Pro to boot up (around 5-10mins), thats excluding loading the stuff on my task bar. At first I thought my gfx card had finally died on me but my bios shows...so my gfx must be still ok. And for some odd reason the idea of disconnecting my 'dying' HDD poped into my head and what do you know once the 'dying' or most likely dead HDD is pulled out, WinXP loaded up perfectly.

So yeah...whats up with that? I re-did this little process several times to check if it was actually the HDD that is slowing down the loading. And yeah everytime the dead HDD is plugged in, XP would take very very long to load. As for the dead HDD, it sometimes shows up in the bios and sometimes it doesnt :S...yet regardless, XP would still take AGES to load.

Btw XP is on separate HDD.
CCF (6760)
498676 2006-11-13 04:36:00 Hi all

Just yesterday I found that my 120GB SATA HDD died, previously the files on the HDD were becoming un-readable though it was only about a good 2% of the 110GB files that I had on there . I'm not going to ask how to recover the files on the HDD as I know this question has been asked many many times . And it seems people always give the same answer . However would been keen to know if theres any 'new' ways or tips in possibly getting a dead HDD to work for atleast an hour or so . However my main question is really with the dead SATA plugged in my system, it takes almost forever for my WinXP Pro to boot up (around 5-10mins), thats excluding loading the stuff on my task bar . At first I thought my gfx card had finally died on me but my bios shows . . . so my gfx must be still ok . And for some odd reason the idea of disconnecting my 'dying' HDD poped into my head and what do you know once the 'dying' or most likely dead HDD is pulled out, WinXP loaded up perfectly .

So yeah . . . whats up with that? I re-did this little process several times to check if it was actually the HDD that is slowing down the loading . And yeah everytime the dead HDD is plugged in, XP would take very very long to load . As for the dead HDD, it sometimes shows up in the bios and sometimes it doesnt :S . . . yet regardless, XP would still take AGES to load .

Btw XP is on separate HDD .

The reason for the delay, is the O/S attempting to read information about the drive, and having to re-read due to errors .
Because XP is PnP, it loads drivers for all hardware registered enabled in the BIOS .
SolMiester (139)
498677 2006-11-13 04:39:00 When you think about it, it is fairly self evident. POST, power on self test, tests the cpu, memory, chipset disk controllers, hard drives, video cards, etc All this has to be ok before proceeding to the drive with the OS on it.

So it is spending forever and a day struggling with the wonky drive trying to get it to respond properly until it eventually concedes defeat :)

If the drive is dead or dying, it could well be the drives' circuit board gone faulty. If that is so then there is nothing that can be done except try to get another similar drive and swap boards, which is one of the data recovery techniques.


OK seen Sols reply, so you have the choice of 2 answers :)
Terry Porritt (14)
498678 2006-11-13 04:41:00 Dead HDD causing the problem? PedalSlammer (8511)
498679 2006-11-13 05:00:00 ANY operating sytsem will have trouble loading if theres a slave drive which is dying on the system as well.... drcspy (146)
498680 2006-11-13 05:12:00 Ahh I see I see....this make fixing the HDD very difficult if I wanted the HDD to be plugged in >_<.

Btw where are most HDD been made these days? I know before most or atleast most that I've seen were from either Malaysia or Singapore the one I got was from China and there has been several new ones that I've seen that were also from China.
CCF (6760)
498681 2006-11-13 06:00:00 Aren't SATA's HotSwapable? Plug it in when your in windows. trinsic (6945)
498682 2006-11-13 07:21:00 WHAT??? Really??? CCF (6760)
498683 2006-11-13 10:50:00 WHAT??? Really???

Someone can probably back this up but you need to make sure it has the option to do it.

en.wikipedia.org


Protocols that now support hot swapping include PCMCIA, USB, FireWire, Fibre Channel, SATA and SAS. Protocols that do not support hot swapping include PATA.
trinsic (6945)
498684 2006-11-14 06:28:00 A back up would be nice :) CCF (6760)
1 2