Hard drive failure i think

Tea_Bag

have a friends Dell inspiron laptop here because it has problems.
it starts up fine, and then boots into vista as usual, but then hangs on a black screen (before you get the desktop)

a system failure scan reports error code: 0F00 : 0707

i believe this is a hard drive problem, so i removed the HDD (toshiba mk8034gsx 80gb 2.5in)

and attached it to my PC with the SATA cable, so as to do a proper HDD scan and save some files, but my PC doesnt see it at all. there also isnt a spin up sound or anything. am i right in assuming that the HDD needs no external power and it should get enough from the SATA cable? there is a few more "prongs" sticking out the HDD, but i dont know what they're for.

fudgez

Tea_Bag wrote: »

have a friends Dell inspiron laptop here because it has problems.
it starts up fine, and then boots into vista as usual, but then hangs on a black screen (before you get the desktop)

a system failure scan reports error code: 0F00 : 0707

i believe this is a hard drive problem, so i removed the HDD (toshiba mk8034gsx 80gb 2.5in)

and attached it to my PC with the SATA cable, so as to do a proper HDD scan and save some files, but my PC doesnt see it at all. there also isnt a spin up sound or anything. am i right in assuming that the HDD needs no external power and it should get enough from the SATA cable? there is a few more "prongs" sticking out the HDD, but i dont know what they're for.

Sata drives still require power should be this connection http://www.cooldrives.com/lib/cooldrives/sata-hard-drive-power-cable-connector.jpg

leeroybrown

No. S-ATA requires a separate power connector too.

CoalBucket

Had a similar problem recently. Had to get the drive replaced. Lost all the data including some valuable stuff. Repair place told me it was a mechanical problem with the drive and that the data could be retrieved but they would have to send it away to some place in England and it would cost about €1500 :eek: The data wasn't worth that much !!!

Tea_Bag

fudgez wrote: »

Sata drives still require power should be this connection http://www.cooldrives.com/lib/cooldrives/sata-hard-drive-power-cable-connector.jpg

FAIL!

i was thinking of 2.5in external HDD's, and they run off usb not SATA anyway.

ok so after powering the HDD, i switched on the PC and..... nadda. it posts and goes to the W7 load screen, but loops there.
tried safe mode, but it got stuck on loading "atipcie.sys" (graphics card driver?)

so i booted the PC with the HDD plugged in, leaving it powered, but no SATA cable attached. once it went to desktop, i plugged in the SATA cable, and the PC still isnt reading the HDD in "my computer" or device manager, but it does see it in the bios though.

would this problem go away if i just formatted the HDD with a windows CD? the data isnt that important for all this bull****.

Knasher

If I had to take a guess I'd say that firstly when you plug in the hard drive and boot you are actually booting to the laptop harddrive, hence why your computer isn't starting with it in. Secondly SATA hotpluging doesn't work unless you are using ACHI which has to be enabled in the BIOS (but unfortunately isn't by default) and must be done when you are first installing the computer (it will blue screen if you just change it over, there is a way around that but its not important here).

Anyway what you should do is plug in the drive when you boot and go into the BIOS and make sure the desktop hard drive is detected prior to the laptop one. You should be able to boot then and run whatever tests you want to on it.