I have an HP pavillion desktop and got the S.M.A.R.T. warning. Disk status: Bad. Failure is imminent. Immeidately back up your data. A friend and I tried installing a new hard drive but windows wouldn't load on it. It had a lot of debris covering the cooling fan on the back and figure that the motherboard probably fried. If I buy an enclosure for the internal drive and try to retrieve the data via usb, will it be forever dedicated to the enclosure? If the drive is bad, what are my other data-extracting options? BTW, the hard drive doesn't make any noise.
2007-11-27 04:39:31 · 5 answers · asked by Brandon C 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
if its bad it wont work in the enclosure either ... if its bad even slaving it into another machine and using a data recovery application may not work .. if u do put a new drive in the machine try loading bios defaults first .. and its possible u have compound problems u will just have to eliminate them ..
2007-11-27 04:43:00 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
When you start your system, do the fans spin up, and does the little RAM light come on, and can you get into your BIOS? If so, then the motherboard is probably ok.
Next, if the system boots to windows, then the motherboard is probably ok.
When you attempted to install a second drive, did you set the jumper on "both" drive to the correct settings. The "C" drive shoud be set to "Master" or Master with a Slave" and the seconed drive should be set to "Slave". Also, if the second drive is new, then it needs to be formatted, or Windows will not be able to see it. The easiest way to format the drive is to to remove the cable from the "C" drive and connect it to the new drive. Set the jumper on the new drive to Master and insert an XP installation CD into your CD drive and restart the computer. All XP to begin the installation process. Windows will see the unformatted drive and ask to format it. Allow this to happen. Do no leave the computer while formatting because as soon as Windows has completted the format process you must turn your comuter off or Windows will load XP to this new drive. You don't want that to happen, you just want to format the drive. You can shut the machine down by using the swithch on the powersupply or by holding the power button in for a few seconds.
Now put the drives back to their correct configuration, ie, "C" jumper to Master and second drive to Slave.
Windows should now see the new drive, and be ready to transfer data to it.
If the original drive is no longer working, then you will need to set the new drive up as "C" and reinstall Windows. This will cause a complete lose of data, so I hope that you have all of your files backed up. I back up twice so that I won't ever loose any of the data that I have saved over the years. One backup is to a second drive that is connected to my system, and the other backup is to an online storage facility.
Hope this helps.
2007-11-27 12:58:08 · answer #2 · answered by Ron M 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
smart problems are connected to harddisks so u dont have a problem with your motherboard. connect the other hard the u have as a slave and use norton ghost to clone the original hard on the slave then remove the original and leave the slave. there are other programs that u can use to clone your hard drive in case u dont get norton ghost. every hard disk manufacturer has its own harddisk cloning tool so u can get a free tool from your harddisk manufacturer. good luck
2007-11-27 12:45:04 · answer #3 · answered by tarzan_055 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
are you reading the warning sign after windows has loaded or during startup? i have come across these signs and have deduced that it is actually a virus as the owner can only read it at windows. run security checks first and see if it can detect something.
2007-11-27 12:43:25 · answer #4 · answered by zeven77 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Check the mother boards HD controller- may be bad or need new drivers installed as well-
2007-11-27 12:44:05 · answer #5 · answered by tiberius1164 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋