No idea where to post this, sorry if it's the wrong section.

My PC can't boot anymore if i have my 200gb HDD on power, (I got 2 HHDs)

Is there a way to repair that? 180/200 gb of data! I don't want to lose that. Problem: I don't know what kind of HDD it is, only 200gb 7200 rpm

Did you make any hardware,driver,device setting,bios changes lately.Im assuming youve had this harddrive installed & working before.

It would really help if you knew who the drive manufacture was. You could always download western digital, maxtor, or the seagate HD software & use each to test the drive to see if the there is something wrong with it. I think the seagate software will do a basic check even if the drive is not a seagate HD.

Seagate Baraccuda

I've tried the Test prog. Didn't show anything.

When the computer boots; does the BIOS report both drives?

Yes, both. I think the hdd is broken, that's why i want to try to repair it but can't find any tool

Ah and no i didn't change anything. The last time i installed something was 1 week ago.

You've said it won't boot; but that you do get the bios report and the hardware seems correct on the bios post.

how far do you get past that? Do you see the windows pre-boot init at all, or does it just say something like "system missing / not found"?

Meant to also ask if you hear any physical noise from the drive, like heads clattering merrily along the platter.

Well i see the Windows Icon and the green loading thingy

After that the screen turns black and stops loading (The HDD seems to make a little noise but maybe only because the fans are not running in that state.Very little.)

I have tried to boot with that linux "Knoppix", it does boot with my both hdds but i can't access the 200gb one

Does knoppix recognise the drive and you can't access, or does it not see it at all?

if you boot knoppix, from a terminal window do a fdisk -l /dev/hdb (might be hdc - hda:primary ide hdb:primary ide slave hdc:secondary ide hdd: secondary ide slave)

this will output the partition table and may provide some insight. If you can't access the drive _at_ all then you may be in possession of a brick.

Jut in case its the power supply; you may try booting knoppix with only the 200gb drive (unlikely the problem, but hey..)

also, in knoppix do a
dmesg
in a terminal window; typically hdd errors go there

Thanks, i will try that, i am new to Knoppix. Yes it shows the 200gb but it loads forever if i try to open it.

I will try the commands

Ok: I have tried dmesg and got some errors about hdb1(the 200gb hdd/partition)

I was about to test cfdisk but all i got was a fatal error with ally my hdds, because i am not a superuser and don't have write rights. How do i become a superuser for writing on my hdds? (Knoppix)

well it could be that the MBR is poached. you could try at (DOS i know) prompt with win98 boot disk. fdisk/mbr

Have you tried playing with the jumpers and cabling? if something is lose it may not recognize the problem until part way during boot.

Is there a spare computer in the house you can test the HD in to determine if infact the HD has a problem or if it could be something in the computer u have.

Is the Drive NTFS or FAT32?

Knoppix doesnt mind readign it, but wont allowing righting to it.

umm what else....


have you tried booting to that HD? I take it there is no O/S on that drive, so you acn use a boot disk. Can you read info off that drive in DOS?

You might also want to try BARTPE or PXE to boot from CD and give you an environment to back up, test, restore data.

that all i can think of before breakfast. sorry.

The Problem: How do i get in dos? I don't have an old win98 disc. And i don't have floppy drive, only cd/dvd.

I have another comp but same result with the hdd, there is no OS installed.

Both HDDs are NTFS.

How do i become a superuser for writing on my hdds? (Knoppix)

su -

Worked, thanks. Now i am going to play around with fdisk ^^

Ooooook ... Now i have deleted all partitions on the hdd and voilá my windows boots with both. But ... now i have both hdds in list but the 200gb says format But i don't want to!!!

Any ideas? :-/

Edit: Testdisk lists the old files of the hdd so there must be a program to recover that files? Even if there is no partition.