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General discussion

How can I be sure my new HD is really DOA?

Mar 19, 2007 9:25PM PDT

I just installed a new Western Digital 160GB SASA drive in my Dell Dimension 4600. As far as I can tell, I hooked up everything properly, and tight. I've installed hard, floppy, and CD drives before. This one is giving no signs of life. Doesn't show up on the tree, isn't detected by the WD setup software. But I have a nagging suspicion that it's not a dead drive, but something that I overlooked. Maybe the cable connector isn't seated properly even though I don't see how it could not be. Maybe there's something wrong with the motherboard?
I'm running WinXP with SP2. The motherboard supports SASA, and I tried both the SASA 0 slot (first) and the SASA 1 slot.
Is there a practical way to determine whether a drive is alive or dead before I send it back for a replacement? Or should I just send it back and try again?
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Discussion is locked

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Some things to try
Mar 19, 2007 10:28PM PDT

You need to get the hard drive to appear in system BIOS first before you even attempt to do anything with it in Windows XP.

Make sure both the POWER and DATA cables are connected to it.
Enable SATA ports in BIOS.
Set SATA detection to "automatic" or "autodetect" in BIOS.

Once you get it to appear in BIOS, you need to boot to Windows XP and then go to Disk Management to initialize, partition, and format it.

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I will note that the big name computer companies have been known to use special motherboards that have "dummy" ports that aren't wired to be functional or have BIOS'es that don't address certain functions. If this is the case, you need to chat with Dell's technical support to learn how to use those ports.

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Sounds reasonable
Mar 19, 2007 11:12PM PDT

I'll try those things. Thanks for the advice.
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You need to format the disk
Mar 23, 2007 3:10PM PDT

Hey
You got something - Windows XP HELP is not very usefull. What you have to do i format the disk before you are able to use it.
Go to the ikon "this computer", right click, choose admin..., click on diskmanage and chooce your drive, format and then set active.

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Don't read this ...
Mar 23, 2007 11:51PM PDT

Don't read this for a technical answer, but your question reminded me of the 911 call joke;

911 operator receives a call: "I think my friend is dead. What do I do?"

Operator answers: "First, go back and make sure he is dead, then I can start to help you"

A short pause, and then the operator hears a gunshot.

Well, the long and short of it is that there are several ways to make sure your HD is dead, but first I'd try to make sure it isn't. Wink

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so i've had this problem before...
Mar 25, 2007 4:35PM PDT

my hard drive// MyBook WD External 400Gb

ok, so last week, i left my laptop on all day, it was working that morning..when i came home later from work and tried to listen to music, apparently my hard drive had stopped working.

problem here is : the hard drive still turns on, but doesn't spin... when i had turned it off and on continuously, i had for sure thought my hard drive was dead..as my friend came over hours later, i decided to show him what was wrong with it, and next thing you know, a miracle..the hard drive boots up out of no where and detects all of my files, worked just like normal... now after a week later, i decided to take my external and xfer some files to my computer, my external just doesn't boot up anymore. any solutions on how i got it working last time or knowing that it is still in good shape? tbh i have no idea how i got it working last time... i just magically pushed the button thinking it wouldn't work, and it somehow booted up.

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Possibilities
Mar 25, 2007 6:11PM PDT

I've had problems with external drives three different ways, and none of them caused problems every time.

Modern operating systems like to "eject" external drives, including the now common USB flash drives, (thumb drive, jump drive, keychain drive, I've heard of tons of names for these).

The reason is two-fold: one is that sometimes when you save data to the drive, it is actually only cached in the computer's memory, and ejecting the drive flushes this cache completing the operation. If you shut off or unplug a drive before this happens, files will be missing. More important, if there is disk access that writes information to the directory on the drive before it is fully ejected, that directory may become unreadable, making the drive unreadable.

You didn't say if you eject the drive before turning it off, but that may have been the problem previously.

This time, since you left it on, it may have been a power outage, brownout or a power surge that caused the problem.

Even if there is no permanent damage, then sometimes the computer won't see the drive until the computer has been re-booted. Once it doesn't see it, it doesn't look for it.

Did you turn the computer off between unsuccessfully trying to turn the drive on and off? Sometimes that's all it takes.

If there is damage, such behavior may become more erratic, until the drive quits for good. Depending the age of the drive, this may be due anyway, or it could have been damaged with a power surge or physical bump.

I bought a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) after one power outage, although I suspect it was actually the power surge when the electricity came back on that actually did the damage.

I haven't had a problem since, except when I forget to eject the drives before unplugging them to take my laptop mobile. Techies have an expression for this, something like "the nut behind the keyboard". Wink

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it's fixed again!
Mar 26, 2007 2:57AM PDT

after reading everything on here that i couldn't find regarding my problem, i decided to quit and go to sleep, after 10 hours of research...-_- when i had woke up this morning..

i turned on the laptop, thinking the external hard drive would turn on with it, but it didn't. instead waited until the laptop booted up windows.... crossed my fingers hoping the external would boot up, next thing you know...i pushed the button and..it decided to boot up again!

i have no idea what or why it does that, but after leaving it alone for a long period of time(same thing i did last time) it finally boots up. time to go get dvd-rs to back up my date because i get too stressful when this happens!

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Reply
Mar 26, 2007 6:01AM PDT

Have you called in a professional to try it. It's very rare that a hard drive is DOA. In fact, the odds are less than 1 in 10000