funny hdd

**clauded** · April 12th, 2005, 10:08 AM

this is a first for me,i have this seagate 30 gigs,i ran the seagate utility and all is well,i even ran what they call the low level format and everything come up as being all right,then i run the winxp installation and all update plus av and all that`s needed for a computer to run, the problem is i turn it off for the night and next morning it won`t bootncan`t even start in safe modetried to do an repaidr install of winxp and it looks as if the drive is just empty,lyke it would erase itself overnight,try it over 4 or 5 time still the same problem nothing on the hdd next morning and the hard drive check up as good on diag proggy,what could be causing this?virus of some king?i have never seen a driver doing this before and that`s going back a long time,so you guy``s hope someone can come up with a solution,also the pc is good with a different drive,does it only with this drive,hoe you can help me out

**TechZ** · April 12th, 2005, 11:36 AM

How about after you install xp and shutdown the pc. Boot it up again and its blank? I doubt its an overnight thing, rather an off/on thing. What about restarting the pc? do they work without erasing the Hard Disk?

When you switch it back on the next day, does any message come on the screen?

**3fingersalute** · April 12th, 2005, 11:44 AM

Hmmm, if you've really ran the seagate utility and get no errors, the only other thing I would try is slamming it into another pc and seeing if the same thing happens.

Other that that, get it RMA'd to Seagate if its under warranty, if not chunk it and buy a new one.

**TechZ** · April 12th, 2005, 11:57 AM

I'm guessing warranty ran out on that, its a 30gig, pretty old. Is this new or out of another machine?

**RejectionMan** · April 12th, 2005, 12:17 PM

probaly a clobered boot sector. had an old MFM 30 MB drive do this. as long at the thing was "on" everything was fine. power off and you cannot boot and it sasy its empty. Try a boot floppy, it may provide mough info to bring the system up assuming that track one of the disk is not clobered (pointers to allocations, boot image, MBR etc)

FYI taking the old drive appart you could see that track one had just wore out, the entire disk was the normal platter color while the outside edge was white, all the coating had wore off from use im guessing. enough left to test ok as long as its on, but one off it knows nothing.

**JaxSon** · April 12th, 2005, 01:35 PM

Originally Posted by RejectionMan

FYI taking the old drive appart you could see that track one had just wore out, the entire disk was the normal platter color while the outside edge was white, all the coating had wore off from use im guessing.

That was most probably a head crash where the head actually came into contact with the revolving surface. If you were to examine the data head itself, you would probably find the missing coating that had worn off. Sometimes, you can clean the residue off of the data head and continue but good luck on that deal. The platter itself is damaged in that area as well.

**clauded** · April 12th, 2005, 05:26 PM

i indeed saw that happen a few times with the old mfm hdd,but never since i will pull it apart just to seei don`t eally matters it`s out of a p3 1gig i just was wnodering if someone saw that happen latelyseeing it passes all the test from seagate and those from power maxbut i have lost enough time with this already,though i might give it one more try,lolthanks for the replies

**slavedriver** · April 12th, 2005, 07:09 PM

Originally Posted by clauded

this is a first for me,i have this seagate 30 gigs,i ran the seagate utility and all is well,i even ran what they call the low level format and everything come up as being all right,then i run the winxp installation and all update plus av and all that`s needed for a computer to run, the problem is i turn it off for the night and next morning it won`t bootncan`t even start in safe modetried to do an repaidr install of winxp and it looks as if the drive is just empty,lyke it would erase itself overnight,try it over 4 or 5 time still the same problem nothing on the hdd next morning and the hard drive check up as good on diag proggy,what could be causing this?virus of some king?i have never seen a driver doing this before and that`s going back a long time,so you guy``s hope someone can come up with a solution,also the pc is good with a different drive,does it only with this drive,hoe you can help me out

Posibility that your cmos batt is shot and bios does not detect the drive the next morning.