'Slave' hard drives?

[grahambell]

Another question from an IT dummy for all you experts in PH land.

Just had yet another hard drive failure, the third this year - fking Quantum shite!

I can actually start it in safe mode and have successfully copied and pasted some files to floppies so the data still looks accessible.

Anyway, I have an old 2.1gig HD that's OK and loaded with the same version of Windows, so thought it might be possible to rig things to use one HD as a slave so I can copy all the date from the duff one to the OK one.

The question is how? Believe it's something to do with the 8 pins and jumper but don't know exactly what. Power and data cable connections no prob as I can use the ones for the CD-writer (which typically won't work with my duff HD).

Cheers

[206xsi]

Each IDE cable can hold 2 devices. One should be set to master and one to slave. Or on some systems you can allow the BIOS to choose.

You're right - it's gonna involve using the jumper settings. You're going to need to visit Quantum's website for details on which settings are which.

You should only ever have a master, or a master and slave. You can't have just a slave on one cable.

Can get quite fiddly, so good luck

[Byff]

I'm a complete numpty when it comes to pc's. But one does like to fiddle.

I've put a second hard drive in my machine and it was quite easy. There should be three sets of twin pins marked SL MA and CS on the hard drive. Dunno what the CS was for, but I just put the little bit of plastic thing over the SL pair of pins.

The cable that is currently going to your hard drive should have another set of connectors on it, which you just plug in.

Windows explorer will then show another HD on your m/c

Just get the case open and have a bit of a fiddle.

[THeExcession]

CS is cable select - it allows the IDE Cable to choose which drive is master or slave, the jumpers overide this setting telling the drive to ignore the cable.

I've never managed to get CS to work so stick to using the jumpers.

As mentioned one drive needs to be Master , the other the Slave - that's all there is to it

best
Ex

[pdV6]

I was just wondering what sort of "hard drive failure" would allow you to boot into safe mode? Either the drive's dead or it isn't - safe mode is a Windoze software issue. Are you sure you're solving the right problem?

[rjo]

pdv6 is correct.
What error message did you get that makes you think the HD has failed?

[206xsi]

Good point - does safemode use different drivers for the HDD?

[stc_bennett]

Try and unistal you most recent software or hardware to see if that solves the issue.

Think about what you have changed before it started doing this.

If you got XP use the system restore function.

If not try doing a repair installation of your operating system so that it fixes the errors

[grahambell]

pdV6 said:

I was just wondering what sort of "hard drive failure" would allow you to boot into safe mode? Either the drive's dead or it isn't - safe mode is a Windoze software issue. Are you sure you're solving the right problem?

One that suddenly starts making funny rattling noises then flashes up a 'can't read from drive c' message if that's any help.

Several attempts at rebooting resulted in some complete failure to read HD and some that started ok but then 'clicked' and failed after a few minutes.

I'm assuming it's the HD because that's what's making all the noise and there's been no software changes I can think of since loading it all up the other week, and it was fine to start with.

[ErnestM]

Sounds like a bad boot sector to me. There are ways to restore a boot sector but you are better off with a total windows reload (without Quantum IMHO)..

Also - CS works wonders as long as you are using the 80 wire cables in PIO mode 5. You just have to understand that the cable in the "middle connector" will be automatically selected as slave. It's actually quite handy when setting up IDE RAID...

ErnestM

[ginettag27]

Agree with Ernest about the boot sector bit. Dad had this problem with his old HDD (IBM, bit unusual for them).. Someone else replaced it for him with a slower smaller drive, nevermind! I was away at the time. The drive would work now and again, but not all the time and a Scandisk would start working, but never finish.. (I would suggest cancel;ing this as soon as it starts, otherwise it's reboot time.. If this is the same situation as Dad's was, if it runs and completes then leave it to do so)

Actually before going through all of the info. below you could attempt to use something like Norton Systemworks to fix the drive, if it's totally inaccessible then this could help..

Right! I would suggest getting a nice new drive, as quick as you can afford and as big, with a half decent name. Pc Pro have just done a review of drives, but different people do seem to have different experience and it also depends on your budget... Set the other knackered drive to one side, and set the new one up with windows whatever and some pieces of software. Once you're happy with that, you need to try and get the other drive to be the slave with the jumpers (most days this info. is on the outside of the drive, usually printed upside down/backwards to the way you look at it! just to confuse things The only way I seemed to be able to get data off was to boot in to DOS and then piecemeal copy items across until the old drive refused to work, this is a real labour of love, so take the items you really need first... This is of course assuming you're happy xcopying and so on... Try and list down all the dirs./subdirs you think you need.. Possibly do a quick dir/w to get all of the main directories on that drive.. I then copied the items into a directory called something like old_hdd on the new hdd and then moved them in dir structure and all over. It took quite a lot of time and toing and froing but eventually worked.. 2 days max. but of course depends on your situation and files in question (number and size).

Ultimately you need to try and get some kind of backup/recovery procedure going, but of course this a bit of a horse and stable door arrangement at the moment.. and these things always go wrong when you haven't taken a backup recently.

HTH

EPS

[roop]

Graham,

It wouldn't happen to be an approx 6GB drive would it...? Reason I ask is that I've had 5 (count 'em) 6.4 GB Quantum Fireball 1ct drives go in exactly the fashion you have mentioned. When you get the clunks and the drive read errors it's dicked basically. I have replaced all mine with Maxtors which are great (even though they are now the same company as Quantum). Nowadays I wouldn't touch any IDE HDD unless it had an IBM or Maxtor badge - they're the only brands I have had that have never failed. I do like Seagate and Fujitsu SCSI's though...

Roop

[grahambell]

Thanks for all the advice chaps, I'll see if I can make use of it.

By the way, it's a 10Gb drive, which replaced the 8Gb one that failed 5 minutes before Windows finished loading!

Was going to try running Norton systemworks to see if that would help but the HD just threw another wobbler!

Definitely need a back-up arrangement and was going to see about getting new CD-writer as it turns out the one I have won't work properly with Windows 98SE.

IT? More like shIT if you ask me...