Burned Controller on Drive

My friend removed a hard drive he was having trouble with.

I looked at it and can see a small burn mark on one of the chips and between two of its pins.

He doesn't want to use a data recovery service (can't afford it)
He has a few data files he would like to remove from the drive if possible. He did not have a backup of the data files.

Two questions:

Is it possible to slave this drive in another computer assuming the head etc is OK?

If not:
Can the printed circuit controller board attached to the drive be
replaced with one from a duplicate size, (same manufacturer, model etc) drive and allow access?

The drive is a 10 GB Quantum drive.

Yes, you can hook it up as a slave drive in another computer, but if the chip really is burned out it probably won't be readable.

It's certainly possible to replace the circuit board yourself (it's about the only thing that can be done outside a clean room), but it must be absolutely identical in all respects, including firmaware revision. You may find these articles helpful:

200 ways to recover a hard drive (PDF)

hard drive revival

Thanks, I'll try to find another identical drive and/or controller for sale.

Just wondering why it may not be readable as a slave?

I thought a slave drives uses the controller on the master drive and the controller on the slave is completely disabled.

Update:
Got what seems to be an identical drive controller off Ebay and screwed it to the drive we need the data off of.
The 10 Gig Qauantum is installed in an old Gateway computer and seems to be autodetecting in the BIOS/CMOS setup program correctly.

Result:
Can't boot with the hard drive.When system tries the following message is displayed:
A disk read error occurred
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart


Also; Can't access the drive after booting with a floppy diskette.

Fdisk information shown below, but first received this message executing FDISK.

"Your computer has NTFS partitions which may require large drive support. If you are using another operating system such as Windows NT, which supports large drives, you should enable treating these partitions as large. Note: if you answer Y and the partition display looks incorrect or a hang or a crash occurs do nothing, run Fdisk again, and answer no to the question.
Should NTFS partitions on all drives be treated as large (Y/N) [Y]"

Status...........Type....................MBytes..................Usage
..A..................NTFS................... 9531.....................100%


Total disk space is 504 MBytes


504 MB??
Any ideas? Thanks

Kind of sounds like the bios in this old Gateway can't handle the size of a 10gb drive.

Thanks for the quick reply Doc, that's what I was thinking.
Anyone else?

What type (which win version) boot disk did you use above when you ran fdisk?

One note.... While it is promising that the system booted here and was able to recognize the presence of the drive, this alone does not confirm that the swapping of the circuitboard successfully solved the problem (made the drive useable again). It might have, we don't know for sure yet. But the fact that you got that disk access error is often a sign that the circuitboard replacement is not in fact 100% compatible with the one it was swapped out for (don't know for sure yet, but...) Now it could also be a sign of something else, like the fact that drive corruption occurred when the drive initially went bad.

And one other thing worth mentioning (sort of after the fact here)... When you swap a circuitboard it is possible if the wrong board (not a proper match) is substituted that it can destroy the drive and its data. It is a risk that does exist going in to such an operation. The swapping operation is not necessarily as easy and safe as "either it works or it doesn't". That's why I (personally) generally hesitate to offer board swapping as a data recovery option to people, unless they are willing to run the risk of loosing all should things go astray. I'm not saying that happened here, just raising the issue/warning.

What type (which win version) boot disk did you use above when you ran fdisk?

I used a Windows 98 boot diskette with the FDISK program on it.

With just this rigged up hard drive in there, the only way I am booting up is with this Windows 98 floppy.

The fact that the drive reports a NTFS style partition proves this drive can be read, No?

The fact that the dirve is at least being seen as NTFS formatted is indeed a positive sign. The win98 boot disk is not going to let you read anything off that drive, but...

The issue seems to now relate to the fact that the system can't boot off the drive (disk read error), and that may simply be because the Gateway your trying it in can't handle the size of the drive (bios limitation). You need to get that drive in a system whos bios you know can handle the size and test further there.

The 10 GB drive is now installed physically in a Compaq DeskPro 4000 spare he had.
He installed it on the secondary IDE channel.
(The Gateway it was in would not support this size drive without the BIOS being upgraded to a newer style)

This Compaq computer Deskpro 4000 contains an originally installed hard drive also... a 2.4 GB Western Digital Caviar, and is installed on the primary IDE channel.

The floppy drive has been physically removed to make room.

Having trouble determining if this model Compaq can support this 10 GB drive because I seem to be getting a limited amount of BIOS setup options when using the CTRL+ F10 key during boot up. For example, the option for boot priority appear but not much else.

In fact the message about the "Press F10 key to enter setup" or similar has been replaced with a message saying Compaq Deskpro 4000 in the lower right hand corner, but only when I press CTRL + F10 and F10 again.

My understanding is hard drives over 7.8 GB require INT13 BIOS extensions or LBA to access the hard drive. I cannot find where in the COMPAQ'S BIOS this option is available or setable.

Also the Compaq computer has made a single beep just one time during my many power on off cycles.The rest of the times... no beeps at all.

So...I cannot determine if this Compaq DeskPro computer supports this 10 GB drive.
Any help with the Compaq BIOS setup program would be appreciated. Any other help would be welcome as well, I'm not very familar with Compaq computers. Thanks a lot

Tried running the COMPAQ ROMPaq available for download from HP and no luck.
Created the diskette and could not accomplish anything with it.
Message about not enough disk space when trying to create a DIAGNOSTIC PARTITION.

My understanding is that this is due to there being an existing OS on the drive. The program seems to expect the drive to be empty before beginning.

My plan now is to locate another computer with built in BIOS support for drives of 10 GB or more and which is running XP and the NTFS file system. Setting it up as a slave in such a computer we can pull the data files off.

For the Compaq BIOS check the Rompaq that is what updates the bios.

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/

You say you've tried this in a DeskPro 4000, but question its ability to natively support the 10gb drive. If this system is running XP as the OS it is irrelevant in your case here whether the bios supports the 10gb drive. Since you just want to have it as a slave drive (and a non-boot drive) you can actually just set the drive detection (for secondary slave in this case) to None. This way the bios itself will not even worry about the drive. However, XP will still see and be able to access the drive because it does not care what the bios thinks/knows about the drive. XP completely bypasses the bios and deals directly with the HD. And since XP can obviously handle a 10gb drive... Follow?

Thanks guys.
Train, I have already created the correct ROMPaq diskette and tried working with it....no luck.The program does not fully execute to install, upgrade or modify the special Compaq partition or the existing Windows 98 drive, nor the Windows XP drive in any Master/ Slave configuration we tried..... alone or together.

DrMDJ,
The system on the target drive is XP but it does not boot when configured as the Master, even though FDISK reports the drive as Active...It reports "A disk read error occurred"

The pre-existing drive in this Compaq system is booting up with Windows 98 if I recall correctly......not Windows XP.

Ah. OK, I thought the boot drive was xp and you could just slave this drive you are trying to salvage. Oh well.

Fdisk showed that the Windows 98 drive has 88% usage.

Was wondering if BIOS hard drive support for the second drive, the 10 GigaByte with Windows XP, could be achieved by creating another primary partition on the 2 GigaByte drive with Windows 98 using FDISK in the 12% area that seems available, and then letting my Compaq F10 utilities diskette have a try at creating information on the 2 GB hard drive necessary for the computer to enter the F10 utilities and set up the 10 GB hard drive?

FDISK currently reports the Status of both drives as "Active".
If this is possible and works, I need the Windows XP drive to boot.

Was planning to set the 10 GB XP drive as primary slave before beginning. Anyone know if this strategy would work?

I'm pretty sure that you can't use fdisk to create a partition on a drive without losing your data, but there are partion programs that will do this.

Leurgy,
You can create additional partitions without losing data as long as there is unpartitioned space available on the drive.

Thanks Robert M, didn't know that. Never had the occasion to fdisk a drive with data on it. That is good to know with the size of the drives these days. Lately I've tended to stick to the utilities offered by the HDD manufacturers.

I'm unclear exactly what your asking here, but if it is whether you can get around a bios drive size limitation by partitioning up a drive in to sizes that are within the bios' limitation the answer is no. A bios limitation is for an entire drive it sees, regardless of partitioning.

Again, I may have misunderstood your question/statements so post back if I did.

My understanding is that Compaq stores or used to store some BIOS/CMOS setup information on the hard drive.

The basic problem is that I cannot seem to enter the BIOS/CMOS setup on the Compaq computer using F10

Some BIOS/CMOS options are presented when the CTRL+F10 keys are used but I can't see where to install an additional drive...the 10 GB.

Anyone with a Compaq Deskpro out there?

Check the Compaq site for your particular model. I've seen some Compaqs that need a setup or configuration utility that is on a floppy you boot with. Post back with the model number and I'll see if I can find what I'm thinking of.

This is an example of what I'm looking for but I don't know your Deskpro model number.

Thanks Leurgy,
It is a Compaq Deskpro 4000 model 5166.
I may have tried previously with a diskette that was outdated.
Anyway, I downloaded the file from the link you posted...and it seems to be applicable for many models, including the 5166. The downloaded file uncompresses many files and running the makedisk.bat creates a series of 3 diskettes when executed and I created the 3 diskettes.
One small problem: after creating the 3rd diskette, a message says to be sure to read the ROMPAQ text file, and there is not one included on the 3 diskettes when I searched. It's not in the download directory where I downloaded the file and uncompressed to either. Nice going Compaq.
Also:
The Compaq info at their website states or leads me to believe that the diskette can be used directly to enter the F10 utility just by booting up with the diskette, but I don't think that's the case. We shall see.
Will try this new set on the Compaq 5166, and see how it goes. Will let you know.

Think I found the manual. Got this from it.

"5-48 Desktop Removal and Replacement Procedures
The system will automatically recognize a hard drive sold by Compaq or any other Plug and Play
hard drives and will automatically reconfigure the computer. If you have installed a third-party hard
drive that is not a Plug and Play device, you will need to run Computer Setup to reconfigure the
computer. Refer to Chapter 2, “Troubleshooting,” for information on running Computer Setup."

The page for the manual is here. For some reason it is split into chapters. Chapter 2, "Troubleshooting" is here.

A rompaq is a bios flash utility and the rompaq.txt is the instructions on how to do it. A typical rompaq.txt.

Rompaq downloadable files.

HTH

The computer does not produce the white rectangle on the display screen for BIOS entry.
An hourglass with sand running through it is displayed after powering up (lower left corner) with the Compaq orange screen.

Pressing the F10 key while hourglasss is displayed does nothing.

I tried the diskettes and no luck.
First of all, the computer is reporting a "1790 disk 0 error' with our 10 GB as primary master and no other drives connected.


After booting with the first diskette, it can be used to run diagnostics and Manage the DIAGNOSTIC Partition.
This diskette reports an 8.X Gigabyte hard drive during tests and no errors.

The second and third diskettes do contain a setup.exe program for configuring the system and they execute.
When trying to "install system setup" with the second and third setup disks, a message appears that says that a diagnostic partition cannot be found, and basically use the first diskette.
When trying to create the diagnostic partition using the disk 1 utility I get
"There is not enough space available on the hard drive for the diagnostics partition.
To install the Compaq utilities, you must free at least two megabytes of drive space at the beginning of the hard drive.
You must also have an available entry in the master boot record for the partition information.
Caution; if a partition exists of type 12h, do not remove it from the master boot record. if the partition is at the beginning of the hard drive, it will be increased in size to make room for the Compaq utilities."
Also, Getting the message
"Error loading operating system"

Where can I find a motherboard BIOS upgrade chip for the old Gateway 486 computer to enable it to support a 10 GB Quantum drive? This seems to be easier than dealing with a Compaq computer at this point.

Quote:

---

that says that a diagnostic partition cannot be found

---

The compaq's original HDD had a "hidden" partition that had that on it.

If you were to blow off the Win98 and put XP on it? Can't you slave this drive on an XP machine that can handle 10GB?

Quote:

---

Where can I find a motherboard BIOS upgrade chip for the old Gateway 486 computer

---

If it boots run Belarc or Everest Home or Aida32 and identify the MB. Need to know that to get the Bios info for the flash.

My next trick to get my old Compaq Presario 5222 to use a 60GB slave drive was to use a ATA card. Fact is you can get a ATA 133 PCI card and use the largest drive made.

If this drive has an OS on it the only way it is going to boot anything is if you put it back in the machine it came out of. It wont be able to boot anything else, unless MAYBE you do a repair install of the XP on it.

Where is the original machine?

Thanks for the replies.
Leurgy, is the Belarc program for motherboard identification free?
The original Compaq computer this drive was installed in is currently being used for Tax returns and contains a new 60 GB drive running Windows XP. I don't want to risk opening this computer and possibly opening another can of worms or damaging anything because a full backup of this computer's drive and data files does not exist yet. But yes, I agree that slaving in a working Windows XP system with NTFS would be a good plan.

Think I may still have a jumper related problem with the 1790 Disk 0 error. Need some jumper documentation on a Quantum 10 GB LCT 10 Fireball hard drive.

I think he's running the same version of Windows XP Home and it has the NTFS filing system on the newer Compaq with 60 GB and was thinking of creating a startup diskette with it to boot the other computer into XP.
I found the intructions for creating the XP startup diskette at Microsoft and the recovery console diskettes and he has a Windows XP CD.

Leurgy, don't understand the statement about not being able to boot with the drive except in the original computer.

Train, yes an expansion card may be an option also.
Thanks for staying with me on this.

Belarc is free and will fit on a floppy.
Everest Home Edition is free and the better program. But is a lot bigger.

Yes Belarc is free and fits on a floppy.

Everest Home Edition gives a much more detailed analysis.

As far as booting another machine with that drive its important to remember that when that drive had the OS programmed onto it the OS was customized to the machine it was in inasmuch as all the drivers for the hardware pertain to the original machine. If you then take that drive and put it into a machine with vastly (or even mostly) different hardware the OS has no idea of this and will blindly go about attempting to boot the original machine. I've only seen it work once and as it booted it was furiously adding new hardware and had to be restarted a number of times. The result was two modems, four IDE Controllers, numerous errors and blue screens etc.

Jumper settings.

Thanks for reply and the jumper settings.
With regard to to the jumper settings, does anyone know what that phrase in the link means? A two jumper option:

"DS with CS for slaves not Supporting DASP"

Would you leave the drive in the default position CS, or, set it to DS for a single drive on a primary string, or remove the jumper when using a straight through cable?

Set it as master if its the only drive and put it at the end of the cable. On the first boot go into the bios and auto detect new hard drive, F10, enter.

You might need to try different positions. It ships on CS, but thats in the machine it came out of.

D.A.S.P stands for Drive Active - Slave Present. It is only applicable when the master drive (in a 2 drive, master/slave configuration on a cable) uses/requires DASP as a means to let it know there is a slave. With older (like original ATA-2 or earlier) drives the master drive actually arbitrated things on a given channel. So the master drive had to know (be told) when there was a slave present. This was done via a signal on line 39 of the cable. What those instructions you have are saying is that if you have a master drive that uses DASP but a slave that does not appropriately signal on line 39 then the way to jumper it is to set both the DS and CS jumpers (to compensate and allow things to work properly).

All a non-issue in your case I believe. I would just set both drives to CS (or master/slave)