HD prevents computer from booting

gprellwitz

gprellwitz

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Grant Prellwitz
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On another thread I posted about Leslie's computer. It recently stopped booting. It would go to the HP BIOS screen (where it allows you to select Setup, Dagnostics, Change boot order, etc.) but wouldn't go any further. Even the keyboard was locked (the LEDs don't toggle when you press NumLock or CapsLock). I thought I was going to need to replace the system board. Before ordering a replacement, though, I thought I'd do a little troubleshooting.

It turns out that unplugging her 750GB Barracuda SATA drive solves the problem. After doing that, it will go into setup or boot off the DVD. Unfortunately, that drive is her main drive, and you guessed it, she doesn't have a backup. :mad2:

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

My thinking is:
1) Buy 2 new SATA drives, install 1, and load an OS. Either Vista Home 64 (what it came with), Windows 7, or Ubuntu. I'd probably go for the latter, but she's opting for the former at this point.
2) Get an external USB enclosure for the "bad" SATA drive and install it.
3) Attempt to read the data from the old drive. It seems to spin up (I can feel a slight vibration when power is applied).
4) Use the enclosure with the 2nd SATA drive and run regular backups! :)

Any comments or suggestions?
 
Well before you abandon all hope on the hard drive, give spinrite a try. It's a bootable utility, just burn the .iso to a CD.

If that doesn't work, I'm afraid there isn't much that can be done to recover the data without spending a few thousand dollars for professional data recovery.

But hey, it's a Seagate. They've been known to survive atmospheric re-entry!

http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti..._i_hard_drive_data_recovered_from_crash_site_

Good luck!
 
Arbiter419 said:
Well before you abandon all hope on the hard drive, give spinrite a try. It's a bootable utility, just burn the .iso to a CD.

If that doesn't work, I'm afraid there isn't much that can be done to recover the data without spending a few thousand dollars for professional data recovery.

But hey, it's a Seagate. They've been known to survive atmospheric re-entry!

http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti..._i_hard_drive_data_recovered_from_crash_site_

Good luck!
Click to expand...
The problem is that the computer won't boot if the drive is attached via SATA. I don't mean that it won't boot from the hard drive, but that it won't boot AT ALL!:yikes: That's why I'm hoping that I can put it in a USB enclosure, so I can (hopefully) boot the computer from another OS, plug in the drive via USB, and access the data. I have no reason to believe that the media itself is damaged. I expect that it's just the electronics on the drive. So even if I cannot attach it as a USB drive, recovery "should" be a matter of pulling the actual drive enclosure free from the electronics and attaching it to new electronics. Shouldn't even need a clean room!:fcross:
 
Ohhhh, I understand.

Well in that case, I'd try a hot-swap type deal...SATA is designed for that, so boot into a linux distro like puppy or ubuntu and plug the drive in and see what happens.

If that doesn't work, then I'd go for the external enclosure. Let me know if you find a good one, I'm in the market for one...I've got an 80GB SATA drive that I traded for sitting on my desk, still in it's anti-static bag. It's sitting there because my heatsink is too big for me to put in or remove any hard drives or hard drive cages without removing absolutely everything from my case...I love the cooler (Gemin II), but I absolutely hate tearing everything down just to re-apply thermal paste or add a hard drive.

Lesson: don't ever ever buy a bolt through heatsink.
 
I don't feel comfortable hot-plugging a drive in while the system's running unless it's USB. Yes, the drives are supposed to be able to do it (with SATA), but I'm not sure the system board supports it.

BTW, this is a Barracuda 7200.11 750GB drive. Now I see that there's a history of the 7200.11's bricking themselves due to a bad BIOS way back in January! Argh! I think I'll contact Seagate on this to see if they can repair the drive via the SD1A BIOS update. I've seen at least one instance where they were able to do that and thereby "recover" the data.

Edit:
Argh! I checked Seagate's site, and they say:
The product you identified was sold as a system component. Please contact your place of purchase for service. Seagate sells many drives to direct OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) customers. These products are usually configured for the OEMs only, as components for their systems. You must contact your place of purchase for any warranty support on these drives.
If you purchased this unit directly from Seagate, please return to the previous page and verify your Seagate customer number, because the customer number you entered () does not match our records.
Click to expand...
 
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Ah, the ongoing saga of the 7200.11 series. Very sad. Seagate's losing a great deal of the goodwill they've built up over decades because they dropped the ball on these drives.

Putting the drive in an external enclosure won't help. The drive bricked itself for protective reasons, to preserve the data, and it won't be recognized by BIOS, even in an external enclosure.

The drives can be unlocked to clear the BSY state, however; and once the drive is unlocked, the firmware update can be applied using Seagate's utility ("SeaTools," I think). In fact, there are people who do this pretty much for a living.

I also fixed a few of these drives (fewer than a dozen) earlier this year after Stefan died, but no one has called with that particular problem for probably six or seven months. All that's really needed is a JTAG cable. I may still have my home-made one in a bin somewhere; but then again, it may have gotten tossed during the Great Cleaning Blitz of 2009.

There's also a cell phone cable that works (CA-42 maybe?).

The instructions at http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/Home seem to work. They did every time I tried them, anyway.

If you want, I can do it for you. But I'll probably have to buy the parts and build a new cable, because I really have no idea where my old one is. The parts for the cable are probably less than twenty bucks, but it would take a few days to order them and get them (unless MicroCenter happens to have them in stock, which actually wouldn't surprise me).

If time is of essence, this guy has gotten pretty stellar reviews around the net. I never dealt with him personally, but he seems to have set up a nice little side business fixing these buggy drives. He's probably better than I am at it, too, since he seems to a lot of them.

-Rich
 
Oh man...the 7200.11 plague...make it stop!

I've exhausted the extent of my advice regarding the subject, but I do have some advice for you.

Buy Western Digital ;)

Good luck!
 
Thanks Rich! Before I move forward with that, though, does it sound like that is the problem? Obviously the drive is having problems, but would this sort of a lockup be what we would expect? If the drive just isn't recognized, I'd expect just a standard no bootable media message.
 
gprellwitz said:
Thanks Rich! Before I move forward with that, though, does it sound like that is the problem? Obviously the drive is having problems, but would this sort of a lockup be what we would expect? If the drive just isn't recognized, I'd expect just a standard no bootable media message.
Click to expand...

I'd say it's probably the problem, although it's been months since I had to deal with this.

IIRC, whether you get an error message, or the drive locks up the BIOS, or BIOS skips the HD and tries to boot from the next device, varies with the onboard SATA controller. I can't swear to it, though; like I said, it's been a while.

The whole fiasco was a royal pain, despite the unlock process being straightforward enough. This was because Seagates updates were less-than-perfect. Sometimes the update would fix some drives in the series, but brick others (especially the 500 GB drives, as I recall).

A few times, I unlocked and flashed a drive, but then it would brick itself again a few months later even with the flash update installed. Those drives I unlocked again, and cloned to new drives -- for free (except for the cost of the new drive).

After that happened a couple of times, I started just unlocking the drives but not applying the updates. I would just clone the drive to a new Samsung or WD drive.

Needless to say, as much as I needed the money, I wasn't too disappointed when these calls stopped coming in. They were a royal pain. The unlock process was easy enough, but the results were unpredictable. I like to be able to say to a client, "It's fixed," not, "I think it's fixed."

I really don't know whether Seagate finally came up with a firmware fix that solves the problem permanently. I imagine so, because I haven't heard of any problems with drives manufactured more recently. Probably that other guy whose link I sent would know better since he does oodles of these jobs; but whether he's willing to share that information, I can't say. It would be good to know before wasting time on a fix that may not keep.

One thing I did luck out on was that I inherited a bunch of brand-new WD drives when Stefan passed away, which I then sold to clients on upgrade jobs, of course (hey, he didn't leave them to me to use as paperweights). Otherwise, I probably would have bought and use Seagate drives, as had been my habit; and I would have had to replace them gratis when they failed. Thanks, Stefan. :rolleyes:

By the way -- I looked around for that cable, but I think I may have tossed it during the cleaning spree. I can make another one if need be, however; I just have to get the parts.

(By the way --- this whole mess is another good argument for Casper.)

-Rich
 
It seems this particular problem has been delagated to the HD as the culprit.

I recently "repaired" an HP Slimline computer that presented the same interesting symptoms. It would freeze on the boot screen, lock the keyboard and not allow access to the BIOS nor would it boot from the DVD tray.

After researching HP Forums and an online chat with an HP Tech. The solution was to remove power, disconnect the hard drive, remove the CMOS battery, disconnect the main cable between the power supply and the mother board and remove the ram.
Then put it back together and boot it up.

Worked like a champ.
And if it did not boot, attempt to boot with no RAM installed. If it beeps.. the mother board is dead.

Now that was one COLD BOOT.
 
BillTIZ said:
. . . .

And if it did not boot, attempt to boot with no RAM installed. If it beeps.. the mother board is dead.

. . . .
Click to expand...

Actually, I think if it doesn't beep when booted with no RAM, that would suggest a mobo problem. It's supposed to beep when it has no RAM.

That could also mean a bad processor, too.

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Actually, I think if it doesn't beep when booted with no RAM, that would suggest a mobo problem. It's supposed to beep when it has no RAM.

That could also mean a bad processor, too.

-Rich
Click to expand...

It never beeps on boot up, and neither does my HP Pavilion model.

The HP tech said if it beeps with no ram.. it's a toaster.
 
BillTIZ said:
It never beeps on boot up, and neither does my HP Pavilion model.

The HP tech said if it beeps with no ram.. it's a toaster.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Most PCs beep once upon successfully passing POST, and emit horrifying beeps if they're started with no RAM. Maybe HP does things differently.

-Rich
 
The 7200.11 series just sucks. I have 16 of them, 1TB each, in a storage server. They die constantly.
 
I got a Seagate 7200.3 (SATA laptop drive) in for recovery this morning. Apparently, they have the same kind of issue as the 7200.11 series. But this one isn't just bricked; it doesn't even spin up.

The client's not willing to spend anything for a cleanroom recovery (I finally found a local cleanroom that's not half bad), so the drive's in my freezer. I'll try spinning it up later.

I've always been a big Seagate fan, but I think I may have to rethink that. I've had much better luck with Western Dig and Samsung for the past few years.

-Rich
 
Well, we heard back from the OEM (HP), and they said basically "take it to a shop". So Rich, if your offer is still open and you're interested, I think we will take you up on it. PM me the cost and address if you would. If you're not interested (and I fully understand if that's the case), let me know and I'll try to contact the "Twitter" guy (daskinkaid):).

And I agree on Casper. When the drive's working again, we'll be doing that, or at least get a NAS or something to back up all the computers to regularly!
 
gprellwitz said:
Well, we heard back from the OEM (HP), and they said basically "take it to a shop". So Rich, if your offer is still open and you're interested, I think we will take you up on it. PM me the cost and address if you would. If you're not interested (and I fully understand if that's the case), let me know and I'll try to contact the "Twitter" guy (daskinkaid):).

And I agree on Casper. When the drive's working again, we'll be doing that, or at least get a NAS or something to back up all the computers to regularly!
Click to expand...

If you look into NAS devices stay away from the Linksys NAS-200. I have two of these units. One has 320 GB drives and the other 500GB drives. Both units seem to eat drives. I would say it is an issue of no cooling. Two drives crammed into a housing with no fans.
 
gprellwitz said:
Well, we heard back from the OEM (HP), and they said basically "take it to a shop". So Rich, if your offer is still open and you're interested, I think we will take you up on it. PM me the cost and address if you would. If you're not interested (and I fully understand if that's the case), let me know and I'll try to contact the "Twitter" guy (daskinkaid):).

And I agree on Casper. When the drive's working again, we'll be doing that, or at least get a NAS or something to back up all the computers to regularly!
Click to expand...

I don't mind doing it for you, but if you're in a hurry you may want to email the other fellow, just because I'm going to have to build a new cable (unless one of the old phone cables I have works... hmmm...), which means a trip to MC to get the parts -- if they have them.

Let me dig out a few old phone cables and see if any of them work.

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
I don't mind doing it for you, but if you're in a hurry you may want to email the other fellow, just because I'm going to have to build a new cable (unless one of the old phone cables I have works... hmmm...), which means a trip to MC to get the parts -- if they have them.

Let me dig out a few old phone cables and see if any of them work.

-Rich
Click to expand...
No horrendous need for speed. It's been OTS for a couple of weeks before I even got around to diagnosing the HD! She's got other computers to use. There is some data there that she doesn't want to lose, though, like some pictures and 99's Section meeting notes.

Heck, if I were feeling adventurous, I'd run to MC myself and try it. I still remember G=c800:5 or something like that to engage the low-level format routines of the old Winchester drives on CP/M and DOS machines. I think we could do it using PIP on CP/M and DEBUG on DOS.
 
Well, it appears that the problem was more serious than the standard bricked 7200.11. Rich cabled it up, but was unable to download anything to the drive. He dropped it off at a data recovery place in NY, and they're attempting recovery, at a price much more than the cost of a second drive and a backup package.

Remember, folks, BACK UP!!!

And I;d like to publicly thank Rich for his assistance on this! I might have been able to attempt it myself, but would have had no idea whether the lack of success was my fault or just that the drive suffered from a different problem.
 
You're very welcome, Grant.

I wish it had just been a bricked 7200.11. But when I was unable to talk to the drive once it was cabled, I figured it probably was something more serious. Also, when I installed it in my data recovery machine (the one that I inherited from Stefan), none of the drives were recognized -- not even the EIDE drives. I don't remember coming across that before.

DataMedia's a good outfit. They're a little less convenient for me travel-wise (a little under an hour drive and about $15.00 in tolls) than the other company I use, but they have a more professional style to them. Either company is able to recover data dependably and the prices are comparable. I just get a better vibe from this one.

In your case, it worked out because White Plains was right on the way to my Montrose call, so there was no extra expense for me.

-Rich
 
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