View Full Version : [OT] Question about my HD.
Im a bit confused atm. My comp is 3 years old, And my HD is starting to act up. makes a clicking sound everyonce and a while and freezes. My comp maitenance and repair prof. said that he's had that problem before and he said unless u wanna open it up and try to fix it you should drop it about 3 ft. from floor and let it hit the floor.
anyway i was sayin o well i can get a new HD anyway, this ones only 50gb.
well i was on hookin it to see what kind it is and shit because tbh i dont really all the info on my comp. its a compaq. and the mobo only supports up to 1gb ddr pc2100-pc2700 mem. and its a pretty normal computer. but when i bought it 3 years ago it was like one of the best u can get, 1.5 ghz and stuff.
well anyway lemme stop ramblin, i noticed the HD isnt Ata, serial ata, or raid... and im a bit confused. it confuses me ;OOO
it has a 80-conductor cable AND another small cable that looks a bit like a serial ata cable but isnt red. ( and no im not talkin about the power cable before anyone replies "dur thats the power cable" ;P )
Im a bit confused atm. My comp is 3 years old, And my HD is starting to act up. makes a clicking sound everyonce and a while and freezes. My comp maitenance and repair prof. said that he's had that problem before and he said unless u wanna open it up and try to fix it you should drop it about 3 ft. from floor and let it hit the floor.
anyway i was sayin o well i can get a new HD anyway, this ones only 50gb.
well i was on hookin it to see what kind it is and shit because tbh i dont really all the info on my comp. its a compaq. and the mobo only supports up to 1gb ddr pc2100-pc2700 mem. and its a pretty normal computer. but when i bought it 3 years ago it was like one of the best u can get, 1.5 ghz and stuff.
well anyway lemme stop ramblin, i noticed the HD isnt Ata, serial ata, or raid... and im a bit confused. it confuses me ;OOO
it has a 80-conductor cable AND another small cable that looks a bit like a serial ata cable but isnt red. ( and no im not talkin about the power cable before anyone replies "dur thats the power cable" ;P )dur thats the power cable
:p j/k
Honestly, I dunno. Got a picture?
--Stryfe
dur thats the power cable
:p j/k
Honestly, I dunno. Got a picture?
--Stryfe
i knew someone would do that just to mock me ;P
Im on alot of pain medication atm and dont feel like drivin to go get batteries for my digital camera so cant really get pictures of it atm.
ill get pictures tomarrow if i can remember to get some batteries on my way home from class.
btw one of the dudes in my comp maitenance class bought a comp at a yard sale and he asked the dude how much for it, he said hmmm 100$? and he said sure.
he went home, opened the comp and found out it had 3 SCSI HD's and more 2x 220gb Ultra ATA 7200rpm HD's and assloads of pc3200 ram, only had 1 cd burner, but it was 48x and floppy so it looked like a normal old comp from the outside because the case was really old lookin.
he turned on the comp and it had win2003 server installed on it, had the iso's and reg keys of ass loads of apps, had almost every movie imaginable in vcd format saved on the hds. and assloads of games.
;P wonder who's dad got pissed and sold their warez comp for only 100$ ;P
btw, thing that 2 cables are described like this:
1 is a normal lookin 80-conductive cable and the other is a cable that looks a serial ata cable and the end connector is identical to a cord that is plugged into my pci firewire card.
pictures would be real helpful,
i presume by normal 80 pin cable you mean a IDE ribon (sp?) cable, other than your 4 pin molex connector i havnt got a clue
try to fix it you should drop it about 3 ft. from floor and let it hit the floor.
Which invalidates your warranty and he doesn't have to help you anymore (or sell you a new HD).
Sounds like your drive is on its last legs.
Shujin, it's a Wide Ultra SCSI 3/2 drive probably. Seems a bit overdone to me, but was it a server or something originally? I do know Compaq have had some weird configurations in regular PCs in the past, so I'm not surprised however :p
I am VERY confused about the other "extra" cable though o_O o_O
If you have this 80-pin connector it is most probably SCA, which means the power and all that is built in to the cable. You should not even have a power cord connected to the HD, is that correct? The extra cable is confusing...
EDIT: Does the connector look like this?
http://www.tracezero.net/SCSI/images/SCAmale.gif
Original monk
05-05-04, 10:20
btw one of the dudes in my comp maitenance class bought a comp at a yard sale and he asked the dude how much for it, he said hmmm 100$? and he said sure.
he went home, opened the comp and found out it had 3 SCSI HD's and more 2x 220gb Ultra ATA 7200rpm HD's and assloads of pc3200 ram, only had 1 cd burner, but it was 48x and floppy so it looked like a normal old comp from the outside because the case was really old lookin.
he turned on the comp and it had win2003 server installed on it, had the iso's and reg keys of ass loads of apps, had almost every movie imaginable in vcd format saved on the hds. and assloads of games.
;P wonder who's dad got pissed and sold their warez comp for only 100$ ;P
snif, why dont those things NEVER happen to me :(
about the dropping of the harddisk to get it working again !!!
We had some servers that used some faulty IBM-disks a long time ago. The service technician that came to fix the disks did something similar. He banged the disk agains his boots a couple of times, and they started working again.
You could not do this a lot of times, but if they didnt have spares, this would get the server to work until spareparts could be ordered :-)
modern hdd's tend to be a little more sensitive than the older ones, ive got western digital door stop that still works despite years of abuse by peoples feet.
You could always look up the part number on this new invention called Teh Intarweb.
If I were you I'd backup NOW. Then throw it away whatever it is.
Ticking noises = drive fucked. Unless you have a cleanroom and know what you doing you are not going to fix it to a state that I would trust.
/edit - best guess on the mystery cable is jumper relays though why they'd bother I don't know.
lemme clear up what i said, i didnt say 80-pin, its 40-pin, but its the 80-conductor type ultra ata/dma use. so i was thinking my hd was an Ultra ATA but then seen the extra small wire and im like... wtf???
and the small one looks like an ide cable but is like 1/8 the size, and is 9 pin(i think)
I re-iterate ...
Look at the part number - otherwise you'll just end up with a 5 page thread full of good intentioned speculation but zero certainty
(and a fair proportion of irrelevant bollocks, naturally :D)
I re-iterate ...
Look at the part number - otherwise you'll just end up with a 5 page thread full of good intentioned speculation but zero certainty
(and a fair proportion of irrelevant bollocks, naturally :D)
its in a small case w/ tons of sharp edges >.< but guess ill look a bit later
and jenau its not really a bad bad problem because it only happens like 1 time a month, mabye 2 times. and its done it for quite a while. its just a bit annoying when it happens because i always think man i hope it works still when this is over ;P
but my teacher said he's seen it alot and what he told me almost always works. and he said the thing, i guess he thinks it is, is that either the head is messed up( which he said if it is i do need to get a new one fast ) or the arm is catching on something in there or missing catching on something and keeps going ( it sounds alot like when u hold a fan still when its trying to rotate )
Any form of knocking is ultra-bad and means it will fail sooner or later.
Think about it this way - your data is on a very delicate disc spinning at 5000+ RPM, every knock you hear is the armature slamming into that disc as it skids past at up to 70mph. The arm may not weigh much but it doesn't need to. The arm itself is also delicate and not best suited to having the bejeezus knocked out of it, let alone the head on the end of it.
What your teacher is telling you is shocking advice IMO. Tricks like that are fine for desperate situations where nothing else works and you just need to get as much of the data off as possible before you scrap it. Relying on them for live components is just stupid.
If you have the money for a replacement I would do it now, if you don't I would disconnect the drive and wait till you do. If you need to keep it in there to use the PC then take backups now and work off a zip disk or similar for any documents you care about.
What Jernau said.
Smacking the disk around is vanishingly unlikely to actually long-term cure a physical fault, and is much more likely to just fuck it irretrievably there and then.
Assume it could die permanently any day, and backup/distribute critical stuff accordingly till you can replace it.
Edit: Going back to the other post - you could also just look up the Compaq system model and see what drives they shipped with.
Heh I once dropped my HDD from about 2-3 inches on the wooden table. It was old 1GB Caviar, panzer-style series (a friend of mine dropped simmilar one from about 1.5m on asphalt road and it didn't impressed drive much).
So my prob was that my disk was working and reading data at that moment, so heads crashed at plates. Around 600 first MBs are pretty ok, but then come sectors that hang drive (and whole computer) hard so even reset swich won't help :)
And I've heard about trick to recover data after WIN.CIH attack:
- wrap disk in foil
- put it into refrigerator for exact time
- put it out, connect quickly, you have 10 minutes to copy all data b4 disk die for good.
I don't believe in that btw.
But let's talk about Shujin's baby, coz that looks interesting.
- How is hdd recognised by BIOS? (that could give many answers...)
- Data ribbon has 80 leads. Connector has 40. So is the cable at least classic ATA66/100/133 ? (with black/grey/blue connectors) If not, what other connectors the cable has and most important - where is it connected to?
- Does HDD have standard power connector (molex with yellow/2black/red wires)?
- does disk have normal pins for master/slave/CSEL config?
- Are wires of mysterious thin cable separated or in common insulation?
- the firewire-styled connector - are you talking about external firewire plug, like one cameras have, or is it typical PC "internal" connector, basically row of jumper pins? (like hdd or fdd, just shorter)
- and most important : Where the other end is connected to ?!?
Edit: Going back to the other post - you could also just look up the Compaq system model and see what drives they shipped with.Chompaq don't always stick to the same drive make or model for the course of a system model's life. Worth a try though if it's non-standard I guess.
/edit -
1) The freezer trick is (theoretically) for freeing up sticky heads. Personally I have never seen it work though I know people who claim they have. IMO it's one step beyond desperation trying that one.
2) No form of percussive maintenance will ever remove a virus. WIN.CIH overwrote BIOS data on certain win9x machines btw it had nothing to do with hard drives AFAIR.
WIN.CIH overwrote BIOS data on certain win9x machines btw it had nothing to do with hard drives AFAIR.
It wrote some shit into first sectors of diks so fdisk was going crazy and refused to repartition such drive. You had to load a DiskEditor and fill first few pages with zeroes and then disk was usable again.
Or maybe it wasn't Win.CIH, anyway, it was a virus working that way.
I know that you could revive old diskettes by freezing them, that simply erased all data and made them formattable again.
Anyway, as I wrote, I don't believe in that freezer trick. Afaik the magnetic substance is very sensitive to low temperatures and even slight frost can erase data and/or change this magnetic subst so it'll be no more magnetic : D
Heh I once dropped my HDD from about 2-3 inches on the wooden table. It was old 1GB Caviar, panzer-style series (a friend of mine dropped simmilar one from about 1.5m on asphalt road and it didn't impressed drive much).
So my prob was that my disk was working and reading data at that moment, so heads crashed at plates. Around 600 first MBs are pretty ok, but then come sectors that hang drive (and whole computer) hard so even reset swich won't help :)
And I've heard about trick to recover data after WIN.CIH attack:
- wrap disk in foil
- put it into refrigerator for exact time
- put it out, connect quickly, you have 10 minutes to copy all data b4 disk die for good.
I don't believe in that btw.
But let's talk about Shujin's baby, coz that looks interesting.
- How is hdd recognised by BIOS? (that could give many answers...)
- Data ribbon has 80 leads. Connector has 40. So is the cable at least classic ATA66/100/133 ? (with black/grey/blue connectors) If not, what other connectors the cable has and most important - where is it connected to?
- Does HDD have standard power connector (molex with yellow/2black/red wires)?
- does disk have normal pins for master/slave/CSEL config?
- Are wires of mysterious thin cable separated or in common insulation?
- the firewire-styled connector - are you talking about external firewire plug, like one cameras have, or is it typical PC "internal" connector, basically row of jumper pins? (like hdd or fdd, just shorter)
- and most important : Where the other end is connected to ?!?
it has the cable w/ black/grey/blue connectors, with the blew going into the mobo and the black going into the HD, and the other wire thing is connected to the HD and is almost pretty identicle to the ends of the internal firewire cable.
i just took my copm apart just to dust it and shit and i got a firewire pci card and a firewire/usb thing on the front of my comp, the firewire/usb thing on the front of my comp plugs into the firewire pci card, and the small wire thing im talkin about thats on my hd looks like a tiny ide cable and the ends are connectors that look exactly like the firewire internal firewire cable ( like u said looks like a row of jumper pins cept theres like 5 on top, 4 on bottom row. )
edit: and it apears to connect to that thing u plug usb things into on the mobo, o.0 dunno why my HD would plug into that...
Chompaq don't always stick to the same drive make or model for the course of a system model's life. Worth a try though if it's non-standard I guess.
True - like any manufacturer, they will change component model or supplier for any number of reasons.
However - they won't change the basic architecture of disk interface.
@Shujin: Just post a part number ... *any* model number for pity's sake ... HD, motherboard, PC itself ...
True - like any manufacturer, they will change component model or supplier for any number of reasons.
However - they won't change the basic architecture of disk interface.
@Shujin: Just post a part number ... *any* model number for pity's sake ... HD, motherboard, PC itself ...
wtb, ive taken off most of the identifying things on the pc case itself just because i dont like see'ing labels on the comp ;P
btw, thing that 2 cables are described like this:
1 is a normal lookin 80-conductive cable and the other is a cable that looks a serial ata cable and the end connector is identical to a cord that is plugged into my pci firewire card.
That sounds alot like teh "square" USB port to me???
wtb, ive taken off most of the identifying things on the pc case itself just because i dont like see'ing labels on the comp ;PGet off yer doped up arse and get us some numbers (or pictures)! :p :D
--Stryfe
Get off yer doped up arse and get us some numbers (or pictures)! :p :D
--Stryfe
3x 500mg lortab = nice.
and yes its perscribed... atm.
3x 500mg lortab = nice.
and yes its perscribed... atm.lol :lol: Don't go getting addicted now. :p
How's getting some numbers or pictures coming?
--Stryfe
True - like any manufacturer, they will change component model or supplier for any number of reasons.
However - they won't change the basic architecture of disk interface.
Aye. I was thinking the original drive may not have had this "feature" though. eg it originally shipped with a standard IDE-interface HDD but for some reason they shipped some with dual IDE/1394 connections.
If you take the wire out does it still work? Just wondering because from what you just said it sounds like the guy who put it together had a spare wire, didn't know what to do with it so just stuck it anywhere it would fit.
Oh yeah - get a part number for the drive.
Argh, curiousity is killing meh. Just to remind Shujin to post photos, let's start guessing :D My guess is :
- this is normal ATA drive. 3rd port is master/slave jumper place. Reasons why it's connected to mobo can be one of 2:
- mobo has some weird system to autoconfigure drives (most unlikely)
- guy putting all things together had no idea what he's doing and connected 2 most simmilar looking ports with first cable that matched :D
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.3 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.