Desktop

Ask something
Discussion Locked

cannot access scsi hard drive

0 helpful
5 replies

by mnedil

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I have a conner scsc hard drive CFP 1080S attached to a WD7193 pci\scsi controller card. Both are identified in system manager and are ok. There are no yellow marks or red marks opposite each. The scsi drive shows up as drive D when I start the computer. It was working fine until last week. The drive is still recognized on boot up but I cannot access the drive. If I try to reformat the drive, I get a message no fixed drive. Can I salvage this drive and how? Thanks. MMN.

5 replies

by thechas

Sounds like you may have a damaged or destroyed partition table on the drive.

What happens when you right click on the drive and select properties?

Is this a FAT32 or NTFS volume?

If FAT32, try running fdisk /mbr on the drive.
This may recover the partition table.

If a Windows 2000 or XP system, open Administrative tools, Disk Manager and see what it says about the drive.

Chas

by mnedil

If I try fdisk/mbr I receive a message No fixed disk present. When I check properties in system manager, it states that the disk is functioning properly. If I right click on the drive in my computers and then try scandisk the message reads: Scandisk cannot check the drive because there is no disk in it, it is not formatted or a disk utility has locked it. Insert a valid disk in the drive and wait for the utility to finish and then restart scandisk. Any further suggestions? Thanks. MMN.

by thechas

Try running FDISK and see if any partitions are defined.

The failure of FDISK / MBR suggests that the partition table is lost.

Device manager only looks at the health of the drive controller. It is possible that the electronics of the drive are fine, but the platters or heads have a problem.

Keep in mind that many viri attack the system by removing the partition table.

If you recreate the partition table to the exact same size as before, you may be able to use recovery software to recover your files.

Chas

by cglrcng9

Go here; www.grc.com/freepopular.htm

Look halfway down the page for "FIX-CIH Virus Recovery"

Total recovery from CIH virus damage

Every April, the CIH virus resurfaces and wipes out thousands of hard disk drives by deliberately zeroing their partition, boot, and FAT tables. The first time this happened I wrote this complete post-CIH hard drive recovery utility.
CIH

I just ran into a Win98SE machine that a relative owns that was infected w/ CIH (specifically W95.CIH.Damaged), and it luckily only hammered and destroyed the multi-printer software files (FTP DL.exe & Image Strip.exe), before Norton locked it up. I have seen a few every year come the end of March, beginning of April to near the end of April.

by cglrcng9

BTW, that tool is the absolute best to repair the damage, and it even checks first to see if it really is CIH Damage that is causing your drive problem, then fixes it...He's a whiz concerning drives and many other things...Thanx Steve Gibson!

"...FIX-CIH ? whole drive recovery after "Chernobyl" virus attack
On April 26th of 1999 the Windows "Chernobyl" virus completely wiped out tens of thousands of hard drives. I realized that since only the first megabyte of each drive was erased, it was theoretically possible to completely resurrect the drives by rebuilding the partition table, first partition boot sectors, and first FAT table. I quickly wrote the free FIX-CIH utility to save the data belonging to all of these people. You can see for yourself why I did it...."

This discussion is closed to new replies.