[pchelpers] Re: DISASTER!!! Computer NERD required (Long post)
- From: John Durham <john.modec@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pchelpers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:43:53 +1300
If I am reading this right, your Seagate was damaged by having some/all
of its control data altered by the maxtor utility.
NOTE: Seagate drives record vital drive characteristics in a special
area of the disk surface. Procedures like low level formatting will
destroy it and render the drive useless- never do it!
Having said that, there is a Seagate drive utility you can download for
testing it's functions. Try this url
http://download.seagate.com/seatools/registration.nsf/d_file_return?openform
It will at least tell you if it works. Beyond that, it is between you
and the drive supplier. I'm not sure if you need the whole url above,
but have a go anyway.
John Samperi wrote:
>
> 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
--
Regards, John Durham <mailto:modec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
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