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General discussion

Hard drive communication

Jul 29, 2005 10:45AM PDT

Recently I turned on my computer and instead of booting it showed a blinking "_". Not knowing exactly what to do, I cleared the cmos and turned it back on. At that point it failed to recognize the both of my Western Digital hard drives. I opened up the computer and changed the arrangement of the IDE cables and turned it back on. Then it worked. But now, when I try to transfer files from one HD to the other, it will start transferring and then stop at about 30% and the "3 minutes remaining" turnes into "5", "8", "20" and so on. Anyone know what I should do? My friend says to "flash" my bios. -David

Discussion is locked

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This sounds as if a hard drive....
Jul 29, 2005 12:58PM PDT

is in the beginning stages of decay. Try WDs Data Lifeguard tool for a more precise diagnosis.

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a couple of things...
Jul 30, 2005 2:34AM PDT

Just before the problems occurred had you downloaded anything from the Net?

What anti-virus and firewall are you using?

A problem out of nowhere usually means your hard drive is corrupted and may need to be reformatted.

Do you run anti-spyware and/or registry cleaner? I would refrain from downloading new stuff you don't completely understand for a while.

I will track this thread until things are figured out.

and life goes on...

Jack