HDD failure, computer doesn't seem to want to read the new one - Hardware & Software

My grandpas hard drive has been clicking the past few months (something he failed to mention until it refused to boot up a few days ago) and I've basically come to the conclusion that it's shot. Fortunately I've been running backups automatically for him so we have a copy of his C drive a few days before the crash, but the new HDD I got off of newegg won't seem to read. The old HDD had the 4-pin power bit on it, but connected to the computer with SATA, but I couldn't find a SATA drive in the stores that had anything but an 8-pin power bit, which he doesn't have on his PSU. So I got a PATA drive (WD Caviar blue 150gb I believe) and took the PATA wire off of the floppy drive that he never uses, but when I boot it still doesn't seem to see the drive. I tried disconnecting one of his DVD drives and putting the drive in it's place, but it still doesn't seem to want to read it. I don't have the computer in front of me, but I figured I'd make the thread now so I can try to get the job done next time I'm there, so if there are any details you need to know I'll try to get them.

The first two questions to ask here are: 1. Is the drive formatted to be recognized, have any method to boot, and is it NTFS? You might want a Windows 7 (preferably) boot disk to get started if not. 2. Was the computer a stock HP or Dell or other major brand? If so, most of the mobocracy is used to the SATA environment, and with some older stock computers I have gotten errors if switching drives and drive types, especially with power changes. Most stock machines aren't designed with change in mind. You might have even more difficulty if the motherboard is an NVidia NForce. The stock ones of those are abnormally picky (sometimes) If the problem is just that there is no formatting or allocation of the drive yet, then you are (most likely) in good shape.

I've tried putting the windows xp disk in, but the problem is that the computer doesn't see the HDD, so it just tells me to insert a boot device, and ignores the disk. I'm not sure if it's formatted or not, but shouldn't the computer see it connected regardless? It was a custom build computer, but he went to somebody that has no fucking clue what they were doing and got cheap parts, guy isn't in business any more or I'd just take it to him and tell him I want a new drive in it. I'm not sure, but I think I remember seeing NForce somewhere during the boot process, but it sounds to me like the problem is just that I'm switching from SATA to PATA like you said, because as far as I know there's no reason for it to be rejecting the drive once it was connected.

[QUOTE=CjienX;30071182]...and took the PATA wire off of the floppy drive that he never uses, but when I boot it still doesn't seem to see the drive....[/QUOTE] Oh god, please don't tell me you plugged the ribbon cable from the floppy drive into an IDE hard drive [B]they aren't the same type of cable.[/B] At best, you fucked a bunch of pins on the hard drive from the connector bending the fuck out of them. At worst, you fried the hard drive controller from sending wrong signals and possibly power to places where there shouldn't be. Floppy disks use a completely different bus, and the cable is narrower than IDE. IDE is 40 pins with 40 or 80 wires on the cable, while the floppy is 34 pins. I suggest unpluging the IDE drive ASAP and fixing the bent pins inside the connector on the drive if you did this.

[QUOTE=bohb;30074999]Oh god, please don't tell me you plugged the ribbon cable from the floppy drive into an IDE hard drive [B]they aren't the same type of cable.[/B] At best, you fucked a bunch of pins on the hard drive from the connector bending the fuck out of them. At worst, you fried the hard drive controller from sending wrong signals and possibly power to places where there shouldn't be. Floppy disks use a completely different bus, and the cable is narrower than IDE. IDE is 40 pins with 40 or 80 wires on the cable, while the floppy is 34 pins. I suggest unpluging the IDE drive ASAP and fixing the bent pins inside the connector on the drive if you did this.[/QUOTE] Hes got an excellent point. Even if the setup is correct... The computer might SEE it, but not tell you. I believe in the XP disk, recovery options is how to get to a cmd box, google it if I'm wrong. Enter these cmands diskpart List disk (gives you info) If you think you see the hdd then reply to us, ill give you further commands.

Windows XP almost always needs the OEM IDE controller drivers installed before setup starts (the press F6 to install third party driver) to see hard drives. You can either use a floppy disk to install the required drivers or slipstream them into a custom XP install disc with Nlite or something.

[QUOTE=bohb;30075821]Windows XP almost always needs the OEM IDE controller drivers installed before setup starts (the press F6 to install third party driver) to see hard drives. You can either use a floppy disk to install the required drivers or slipstream them into a custom XP install disc with Nlite or something.[/QUOTE] And that is where it gets very complex. Im so used to win7 disk now...

Even Windows Vista/7 need OEM IDE/SATA controller drivers. The default Microsoft drivers work in MOST cases, but they only implement basic functionality and are not intended for long term use. Other devices fall under the same scope, like GPUs only have basic graphical output and don't implement 3D acceleration like Open GL or Direct 3D. Drivers from Windows Update are no exception because they're often stripped down versions of official drivers, or several versions old.

[QUOTE=bohb;30074999]Oh god, please don't tell me you plugged the ribbon cable from the floppy drive into an IDE hard drive [B]they aren't the same type of cable.[/B] At best, you fucked a bunch of pins on the hard drive from the connector bending the fuck out of them. At worst, you fried the hard drive controller from sending wrong signals and possibly power to places where there shouldn't be. Floppy disks use a completely different bus, and the cable is narrower than IDE. IDE is 40 pins with 40 or 80 wires on the cable, while the floppy is 34 pins. I suggest unpluging the IDE drive ASAP and fixing the bent pins inside the connector on the drive if you did this.[/QUOTE] Uh, the first thing I did was take both parts out and check to make sure they were the same. I didn't just blindly reach into a computer and try to jam the wire in where I thought it went [editline]27th May 2011[/editline] So basically this will be easier if I don't use XP?

Unless the floppy drive is an LS-120 (IDE Floppy Disk) then a floppy ribbon cable is not compatible with IDE because it has 6 less pins on the cable. It is entirely possible to plug a floppy cable into an IDE drive, and is quite easy in most cases because the pins on the side of the cable bend out of the way or break off. You shouldn't give up trying to install XP just because you didn't install the setup driver. Find the model of the motherboard and post it here, and I'll point you to a download for the floppy drivers for XP setup.

Well I know that no pins were damaged at all, I can go and try to find the model tomorrow, but if I can't use the wire out of that how can I get the HDD hooked up? I already tried using the wire out of one of the two dvd drives, but it still didn't read it. Plus that's the only computer that I have access to with a floppy drive, so it'd be pretty hard to get the drivers on. If anything it might be easier to try 7\vista and then downgrade back to XP once the drive is working.

You can't downgrade from Vista/7 to XP. Does the drive show up in the BIOS when you had it on the IDE cable from the optical drive? You might have to change the jumper settings on the drive for master/slave because if you have two master or two slave devices on the IDE cable then they both won't be recognized.

[QUOTE=bohb;30088399]You can't downgrade from Vista/7 to XP. Does the drive show up in the BIOS when you had it on the IDE cable from the optical drive? You might have to change the jumper settings on the drive for master/slave because if you have two master or two slave devices on the IDE cable then they both won't be recognized.[/QUOTE] I can't just put the xp disk in and format the partition? And no, it didn't show up when i replaced one of the optical drives, but I only checked the jumper on the HDD, I'll take a look at the other one tomorrow, I don't remember if the optical drive showed up or not, but i replaced the one that should be set up as the master, so the slave probably wouldn't have

How would you format a partition on a drive the XP setup program can't access? You need drivers.

I was talking after I get it going. I'm pretty much starting this computer from scratch until I can recover the disk image assuming it's even there.

Checked the jumpers, the guy had it set up wrong so the one marked as a slave was set up as a master and vice versa so I had two things wanting to be the master. Once I fixed it and flicked the switch on the PSU there was a huge flash from the PSU and I just killed it. Turns out it was a cheap ass $15 PSU. [editline]29th May 2011[/editline] Got the new PSU hooked up, it recognises both the HDD and optical drive in BIOS, but when I put an installer disk for xp in it just gives me the "reboot and insert proper boot device" error.

I tried looking up the beep codes it gave me but I can't find shit. It's one short beep, then a pause followed by a low pitch, then high pitch, then low pitch again. Mobo is an ECS 945PL-A V1 [editline]29th May 2011[/editline] Now it's One beep, then high low high low

It's beeping while running? Did you make sure to plug in the 4 pin power connector on the motherboard?

It's always beeped right when it powers up, but it used to be a different pattern. And yeah, I plugged the 4-pin in. When I go into bios it says that the cd\dvd drive is primary, hdd is secondary, but even when I hit f11 to force it to boot from the disk it still says insert proper boot device. I also swapped out the optical drive, so either both of those are duds, or it's the mobo. Either way I gave up on it and my grandpa brought it to another computer tech, if he can't fix it I'm just gonna take the HDD and PSU we bought, get a few new parts and make a new computer for him

You can ship it to me and I can fix it :downs: