On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 16:59:21 -0600, Ronn!Blankenship
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 01:50 AM Sunday 1/30/2005, Bryon Daly wrote:
>
> I did not look at the jumpers on the new drive (#1) as they were set at the
> factory before attempting to copy from the other drives, but when I got it
> out, there was no jumper in the "master" position but there was a jumper
> installed next to it in the position labeled "CS" ("cable
> select"?) Assuming that this is what led to the problem â "cable select"
> didn't work properly even though the drives were installed on the proper
> connectors on the cable â any words of advice on what to look for to
> determine that that is indeed what happened or how to repair the problem
> and get the drives working again (preferably w/o losing any data)?
The Cable Select setting basically means that the connector position
on the IDE cable determines master/slave for the drive. As long as
all your drives are set to CS, you can't get the m/s setting wrong. I
usually use CS on all my IDE drives.
It sounds like your new drive was set to CS. It's not a good idea to
mix CS with drives set to master or slave though; you might get lucky
and have it work, or it might not work. (I doubt it would damage the
disk, though). Have you tried the drives individually using the CS
setting?
Just to make sure - Is your CD Rom and/or DVD (if hooked up) on a
separate IDE cable than your hard disk(s)? It's usually a good idea
for them to be separate. For that matter, is the BIOS
finding/identifying your optical drive(s) correctly?
> Tried three different IDE cables. All have the same result (the same
> drives â #4 & #5 â work with all three; the same drives â #1, #2, & #3
> â
> don't work with all three). I've played with the connections and cannot
> seat the connectors any better without using a hammer to pound them in . . .
> :)
When you turn on the computer, do the not-working drives spin up?
(you should be able to hear/feel them do so). If they're not spinning
up, try the freezer trick. If they are, I'm still thinking
configuration issue.
> >- Given that you've got 3 previously working drives all not responding
> >at the same time, it makes me think it's a
> >configuration/cabling/jumper problem rather than actual drive
> >failures.
>
> If it is, I haven't found it yet, hence the cry for help :)
I can't think of any better likelihoods. It's possible you ESD-zapped
all three, but I'd really doubt that. The only other thing is that
both disks that currently work are rather ancient, while your new(er)
disks don't work. Suspicious, but I don't know what might cause old
disks to work but not newer ones.
> >Is there any way for you to try the drives on a different
> >computer?
>
> Not unless I _buy_ another [working] computer . . .
No friendly computer support people where you work, or computer-owning
close friends that'd help you out?
> >- On my brand new PC (replacing the crapped out one), it wouldn't
> >properly detect either of my (new/working) hard disks until I disabled
> >the RAID option in the BIOS - does your PC support RAID, could the
> >option for it have been accidentally activated somehow?
>
> I don't recall right off. (As I think I said earlier, I had had this one
> up less than a week before the problem occurred.) I'll check that. I
> don't remember seeing it: what would you guess I should look under in the
> BIOS?
On my PC, the "Advanced Features" option in the BIOS has the RAID
stuff. If you can't find it right away, it's probably not there.
> Also, as I said, the new HD (#1) which came with the new machine
> [apparently] worked perfectly for several days until I tried to copy files
> off the old one (#2). I had already successfully connected and copied
> files from the 1.6 GB drive (#4).
I just thought of another idea - do you have a Windows XP boot install
CD? if you do, you can try to boot off the CD and see if it finds
your hard disk(s). If it does, it would imply that the disks are just
corrupted somehow rather than dead. But usually that would give a
different error than "unknown device".
> >- If you're really desperate to get your data and all else fails,
> >there are data recovery services that can very likely help. I've seen
> >some as cheap as $200-500, but prices can go much, much higher.
>
> Yep. I know someone locally from the church who does that.
Maybe that person might be willing to just take the drives and see if
they work for him, and just charge you a minimal fee, maybe $25 or
$50, since you don't really expect to need a real recovery?
> other software in that Nero would work while others didn't . . . ). The
> first thing I planned was to copy all the files from the old HD onto DVDs,
> but of course by the time it arrived the computer had quit working . . . :(
Isn't that how it always is? :-(
Good luck!
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