Hardware·18,997 discussions

hard drive (slave) failure

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I did a stupid thing.
WinXP on internal master drive.
slave hard drive in external box connected by USB.

Everything was running great.
I tried installing a new application on the slave.
the installation program froze.
I could not end the installation by using control/alt/delete.
I shut the power to the hard drive off before rebooting my system.
after rebooting the master drive and computer runs fine, except.

the slave drive will not be recognized. the blue light keeps blinking off and on…
I have no way to access the slave hard drive, which has some files I would like to retrieve.

Any suggestions as to what to do?
Is the hard drive trashed?

thanks in advance
Tim

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Clarifications

In reply to hard drive (slave) failure

Clarifications

How do you mean?

In reply to hard drive (slave) failure

Does the computer recognise the external drive? I mean is it seen by BIOS?
Some drivers may be needed to see the drive.

How exactly have you tested this? Have you just looked in My Computer or Windows Explorer? Have you tried the Device Manager?
For example Device Manager may show details about the drive, or may show problems with USB controllers etc.

If it is just Windows itself failing to see the drive, then should be a simple matter to get it to recognise it.

Can the drive be seen on another computer?

Lastly have you got any LiveCD diagnostic disks? Such as UBCD, Barts PE or a LInux Live CD? These are all free downloads, if you have a CD burner and a very good way to check the drive out, thus narrowing the problem down to
a) the drive itself
b) hardware configuration/settings
c) your main OS (XP home or Pro? which SP?)

UBCD in particular has lots of useful extra diagnostic tools, and will be an excellent addition to your toolkit.
The Linux CDs will not harm or interfere with your host OS at all, they run entirely from the CD and RAM, and many have excellent hardware detection scripts, separate to Windows, thus helping in the diagnosis of the problem.

EDIT: To add extra Device Manager details.

Additionally

In reply to How do you mean?

Very good so far,
ut if the drive is found in device manager, but you cannot access it, another method may be needed.
go to control panel — admin tools — look for Disk Management.
In Disk Management, does it show the drive with an unassigned drive letter?
Does it show the file system as ‘healthy’?
or does it show it as unrecognizable or free space (unallocated).

If it does not find it in disk management, then you might have to check the connection/cable for the drive or as Kiltie suggests, run diags to find out if the drive died.

Something else that works sometimes, flip the drive over on its end (verticle, not horizontal) and see if it starts working. If so, the drive is failing.
If not, try letting it cool down for an hour or more. Does it start to read the drive again? If so, get the data off quickly, as it will not last much longer.

OOPS

In reply to hard drive (slave) failure

Sounds like you may have hit the power switch at just the wrong time. Possibly while the drive was writting that all important MBR and now the MBR is messed up and won’t or can’t be seen by the OS. This could lead to your having to reformat the drive, and all is lost. I hope not, but that’s what happens. Good luck

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