However since you leave the machine on for long periods a failed fan or overheated case will hasten a drive's demise.
Best of luck,
Bob
First off, I hope this is the right forum, found it through google so apologies if its in completely the wrong place and admin/mod please move to the appropriate place.
My computer is a 2.8ghz Dell Dimension 4600 with XP pro and had 2 hard drives, the 120GB dell one, and an older 40GB IBM diskstar (or deskstar - I cant really remember, (the second drive).
So, a week ago, I left my computer on downloading to my second hard drive (the IBM). Came home after lectures and checked my computer to see that it had a black screen with white text telling me the BIOS version on the top, and then about half way down:
Primary IDE 0 not found
strike F1 to retry boot, F2 to enter setup utility
So I tried F1 ever hopeful that it might work. Suprisingly enough, it just came up with the same message. So, I pressed F2, and it took me to the BIOS. Under disk management it said it couldn't see a hard drive, and under the boot configuration, next to hard drive it had in brackets the nasty words "not installed".
So, I turned it off, left it a minute, and turned back on. It went through as normal to the Dell loading screen, filled the grey progress bar as normal, but instead of going straight through to the windows loading screen, it stayed at this Dell screen, and all the time since turning it on, I hear this ominous clicking noise coming from the computer. After a minute or so, it went through to the screen described above.
So I'm thinking that my hard drive has somehow died. I opened my computer, and can hear that the clicking seems to be coming from one of the hard drives. My friend who does a computer science degree came round, and fiddled around with the cables and jumper settings, and when we just used the 120gb dell drive, without the 40 gb drive plugged in, and with jumper settings set to single drive. When we booted it up like this, it worked like normal, just that the 40Gb wasnt installed. So, we presumed that it was an old hard drive and had just died.
However, yesterday, I left my computer on during the afternoon, and went up in the evening to use it. And guess what? It has the same black screen with the lovely
"Primary IDE 0 not found
strike F1 to retry boot, F2 to enter setup utility"
message. So I'm thinking not very pleasant thoughts at this time. The same friend is gonna come round later with his computer and we are gonna try and test several different things, and then Ill phone dell to see what they can do (its still within its warranty). However, I'd prefer to be able to get it sorted quicker here, and keep as much data as possible.
So, does anyone know what could be the problem? and what and why the same thing has seemingly happened to both drives, or any way to find out what has happened? Or any resources on the net that might be of use, other forums etc? Pretty much any information anyone can give, any advice, anything will be greatly appreciated. My housemates' computers are all working fine, so I'll be able to check the net normally, and post any more information that you want to know about it.
Please help!

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