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General discussion

Dead Hard Drive

Aug 10, 2004 6:44AM PDT

Hi,

I have a Maxtor 6GB hard drive that I used as a slave in my computer. The O/S is XP Home Edition. Unfortunately, my computer doesn't see my G: drive anymore (my dead drive). Would Norton's Disk Doctor help?

Thanks for any help.

Discussion is locked

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Does you BIOS see it? Does it show in the boot screen???
Aug 10, 2004 7:28AM PDT

Boot up with a Win 98 boot disk and from the A prompt: Type D: to go to that drive [if it is D]. Then type dir/p and you should be able to see what files are on the drive. The slash p says show the files one page at a time.

You should alsao be able to download a file from the Maxtor site to create a floppy to test the drive for you.

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Re: Dead Hard Drive
Aug 11, 2004 3:12AM PDT

you could have a dead or (more likely) loose cable. - fj

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Re: Dead Hard Drive
Aug 11, 2004 4:39AM PDT

A 6gb HD suggests an older HD so expect it to crash at sometime. You can try to save any data using whatever s/w pgm. you can, but its a hit'n miss sorta thing. Get whatever you can be happy with the results as if its a true h/w fault, well what can you do w/o fancy equip. and such. Remove drive, spin it in your hand a few times, return it and reseat all cables and such, what are the reults? No go, try placing in plastic bag in freezer for an hr., return it to system and check results, If no go, consider it a lost cause. Robert, likes to suggest Knoppnix http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20040303/index.html
make a working CD disk and use it to try to access data that way, if no go a real lost cause for the HD. But, someone here may offer other cures or fixes.

good luck -----Willy Happy