Primary failure

Hi, a friend of mine who bought his PC 15 months ago (no warrenty left) calls me up. Trashed he says. Getting primary master HDD failure. He hasnt been inside the machine it just went. Says he did notice that PC had been running slow for a week or 2 and had run scandisk by itself a few times (win98se). Says it didnt pick up any bad sectors thou. But then I dont think he'd always notice that kind of thing anyway.

So I pull the drive and I get the same problems useing it as Primary master in another PC. Booting from system disk I get somthing like 'windows cannot detect a valid FAT' type of thing. fdisk wont pick it up either (of course).Cant get bios to pick up drive at all. Put another drive in PC and its all hunky dory.

What I'm wondering is could it be a virus. I've little xp with clearing up virus's and b4 I go ahead and recomend a new HDD for my friend I'm asking you people for a conformation??

Cheers.

OK this is what we get in the UK , 12 mths warrenty , you havnt said what "breed" the drive is?

1. download the diagnostic software from the Mfg website.

2. get the serial No and "try" to do a RMA .


you will probly get fobbed off as it is an OEM drive (with limited warrenty)

best of luck

Most of HDD manufacturers give customers 3 years warranty (at least 2 years). So,Freddy is right here - check drive's status.
I would recommend to reformat the drive (or use zero-fill utility from manufacturer), and try to reinstall soft.

My opinion here is that the drive is toast. Best of luck trying to repair it, but it might be all for nothing.

If it's a Maxtor or Seagate, you may be lucky they have exellent rma, forget fujitsu there the worst, anyway if you can't detect drive, it's probably dead, plug it up and hold it to your ear if it's quiet, you will hear it if it's spinning,
if it is , fdisk etc, if it is'nt and it's connected ok, its dead.

yo people, thanks for all the replys. First things first: we can forgett RMA as PC was bought from high street store and is beyond there warrenty.

So I have to decide whats going on here. Now I have a prob. I had tried to run Fujitsu's diagnostic software (b4 posting) and, like fdisk and the bios the progs not picking up the drive. But I JUST tried one more time and this time it picked up a drive but cliamed it wasnt fujitsu!! MMMM it quite clearly is a fujitsu ide drive and the software is clearly for fujitsu ata drives.

Unfortunatly I havnt the time to go into more details as I havnt fully done all I can yet but I put a brand new spare Seagate drive in the PC the faulty HDD came from and thats not working quite as I'd expect. I'll post agin tomorrow as I think I may need some more advice but if anyone can tell me if this could be virus I'd be gratefull!!
Thanks.

P.S. I cant format the thing because no programs I've used will actually recognise the drive

had bad dealing with fujitsu (europe). look at the european website ....siemens/fujitsu ---NO RMA prosedure.


QUOTE: fujitsu (europe) do,s not deal with retail customers (unless the retailer has gone out of buissness)
all warrenties must be done through your retailer.

in the UK you get 12m warrenty on a car,computer,tv,etc ,,,,,,the fact that the drive has x years dos,nt mean diddly squat ,,to fujitsu,

i have got 2x20/30g SCSI drives that have "died" dated o5/2000 ,,,,,and they are no better than door stops.

sorry about the beef ,,,,,,i will NEVER NEVER ever buy a fujitsu product again.

sorry,,,,,,,,,


freddy

Could You tell us exact model numbers of that drive like "Fujitsu MPC3064AT 6,4Gb". May be I will find right utility for solving Your problem...

hi ruslan , pulled one of the "expensive" doorstops out,

fujitsu model mag3182lc ID:jw
ultra2 scsi/sca2/lvd
date 2000-05

looking at the pc board ,,with the conectors downward ,,,
large ic : glogic tec462 / 2405169 mka407a/k9950 ,,,, approx 1in sq.

it is the ic directly to the right of it ....cannot read p/No. (1/2 in sq.) ,,,,this has burnt out on both drives.

Hi, well I was having problems getting the PC to take a new HDD but all is sorted now and my spare Seagate is working fine in it. Now as for the trashed Fyjitsu its a
Model: MPG3307AT
ID YFIP
Part No.: CA05761-B343
I've tried the thing as a slave as a master in 3 mobo's now and nothing will pick it up. I tried useing a program called vbust that I got off zdnet but it wouldnt do anything. I'm not entirely sure but I dont think it picked it up either.
Thanks
Andre
Oh, I'm no longer sure that the Fujitsu diagnostic software did actually see a drive. I posted above that it saw a drive but said it wasnt Fujitsu. Now I think that it is possible that it was looking at the CDROM. But am going on holiday for a week now (a day late because of this computer) and have not the time to do any more checks.

as a last ditch effort to get the data of put the drive on a pastic bag, and put that in the freezer for about a hour, take it out and hook it up that may give you a extra 20 min of use to get off any improtant data

To vapd:
So far as I remember,some of Fujitsu drives were having bugs in firmware...exactly MPG series... few times I updated firmware on these drives...but they weren't Your model... :confused: <a href="http://www.fujitsu-europe.com/home/drivers.asp?L=en" target="_blank">http://www.fujitsu-europe.com/home/drivers.asp?L=en</a>

If that drive isn't detected at all - it can be serious problem with surface media (sometimes it can be bad electronics,though). Try utils mentioned in my posts <a href="http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum3/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001019&p=" target="_blank">here:</a>
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To Freddy:
Both drives died?? :confused:
Did You try low-level format for Your SCSI drives?
It can be utility from controller's manufacturer or from drive's manufacturer. For example,I've repaired quite a few SCSI drives using LLF utils from Adaptec.

Good luck!

To Ruslan,

Hey, these utils from Adaptec, are they on the Ez-SCSI 4 CD? or do you download them from Adaptec?

Thanks...


G. ;) :D

To RUSLAN


both drives dead as door nails - dont spin up , not recognised ,,

a "chip" has exploded (burnt out) ,,,,,both h/drives used in different machines 3 months between failures,,,,,faulty batch of drives? ,,,,or just bad design?


freddy

[quote]Originally posted by Garak:
<strong>To Ruslan,
Hey, these utils from Adaptec, are they on the Ez-SCSI 4 CD? or do you download them from Adaptec?
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yeah,utilites I have downloaded from Adaptec site.
But of course,I was using Adaptec SCSI controller with these utils. <a href="http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverindex.html" target="_blank">http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverindex.html</a>