OT: Dead hard drive

[stheg olloydson]

it was said:

>It was working fine and then one day: power down -
>power up - *poof* the harddrive is gone from the BIOS
>POST.
>
>I've tried exchanging IDE cables, putting it on a
>different controller, even a different PC, but it
>will not be detected. I can hear it spin up all
>right, so I know it's not its power unit. The disk
>had shown no signs of being about to bail (even
>though it is a couple of years old). There's nothing
>vital stored on it, although I would like to salvage 
>what I can.
>
>Has anyone got any clue as to what may have happened,
>and how one can go about accessing the drive?
>
>Thanks in advance!
>-Henrik W Lund

Hello,

This is a classic symptom of an IDE drive's onboard
controller going bad. You have two solutions. The
first is to change out the controller with one from an
identical drive and then run a surface scan using
either the manufacturer's diagnostic tool or another
tool capable of remapping the drive's bad sectors.
This is because the new controller will have the other
drive's map. Don't forget to redo the map on the other
drive when you replace the controller. I did this two
weeks ago for a client.
The second solution involves a cleanroom and lots of
money.

HTH,

Stheg

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