[pchelpers] DISASTER!!! Computer NERD required (Long post)
- From: John Samperi <samperi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pchelpers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 08:17:13 +1100
Hello all
As mentioned before, I have had a bit of a disaster. The subject
line calls for a Nice Educated Resourceful Dude (N.E.R.D.) who
can delve deeply into a PC's hardware.
The following was posted to a few lists last week:
**********
Disaster #1.
I replaced my HDD with a Maxtor 40 Gb disk. Unfortunately
it was too good for my computer and it would hang on restart
as it is well documented on Maxtor's web site.
After much head scracthing I managed to get it up and running, the
hang problem still there. A last look at their website and a "FIX"
utility was recommended, UDMAUPDT.EXE that was supposed
to slow down the hard disk to UDMA 33 (mode 2).
Needless to say it didn't work and it killed my old HDD that was
hooked up as a slave. If anyone happens to know if and how
I can revert whatever the fix utility changed in my old SEAGATE
ST3421a I would be extremely grateful. All my data would be
restored. YES I KNOW, Backup! I have quite a lot of backups
on CD and old disks but it is very tedious to bring it all back
together.
*****************
I have received a few suggestions, one of which is to purchase
an identical HDD and replace the driver PCB with my old one.
This would work if the HDD has some EEPROM memory
which the above utility modified and the data on the platters
has not been destroyed, but I will try this as a last resort.
The disk is now installed in an old Pentium 75 machine and
I can safely try anything. The disk is not recognised by BIOS.
I have downloaded Seagate's Seatools but they don't work because
BIOS doesn't see the disk no matter what I try. The disk is still
spinning and tries to perform some BIOS commands, but in a Tower
of Babel fashion, they don't know what the other is trying to say!
I guess I need something that bypasses BIOS and can communicate
with the disk even though is set as NONE in BIOS. With the disk
set to any size, (Seagate recommends setting it as a 20MB HDD for
testing purposes) the computer hangs on startup and will take a very long
time to get to the A drive to load up DOS or any other utility.
I hope someone has an answer. On a brighter note most of my data
has been recovered from various backups but I just know that the day
I will need something in a hurry it will not be there.
Amore Fraterno (Brotherly Love)
John Samperi
Baulkham Hills Congregation
Sydney Australia
http://home.primus.com.au/samperi/jps.htm
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