Hard Drive Caddy.

[Electron]

Hi everyone,

I have an Advent 3507 p4 1.8GHZ computer (shop bought) aaargh! with Win XP another aaargh! It only has space for two hard drives. So i put my old hard drive into the second space, but it got to hot with two running one on top of the other, so i bought two hard drive caddies so that i could swap the hard drive between this and my old computer with Win98SE on, a lot of my programs and peripherals won't work with XP.

Now i have the caddy in the machine with XP and it has a green light on for power, and an orange light that flickers on and off with the main hard drive light. But it does not show the hard drive on the control panel, I have checked the bios, checked the power and IDE cables and everything seems okay. (I did have this hard drive in without the caddy with the same IDE cable and it picked it up straight away). The only difference is the caddy. What am i doing wrong.

The primary hard drive is a 80gb Seagate and the one in the caddy i am trying to put as a slave to it, is an IBM Deskstar 40GB.
As i said it worked alright without the caddy why won't it work with it.

Thanks for any help.

[mike breck]

Hi Electron,

Assuming the IDE cable is orientated correctly to PIN 1 on the back of the caddy and the power lead is working, then I would say the caddy is faulty.

Take it back and get another one.

HTH

[Electron]

Thanks for the reply.
The IDE cable is orientated correctly and the caddy has its own power light and hard drive activity light. The power light on the caddy is on so it has power, the hard drive light flickers on and off with the main case hard drive light. (Should it do this if it is not actually reading that drive).
I have the Seagate as Master and the IBM as slave on the primary IDE. Will have to try the another caddy.

[Electron]

OK, tried a new caddy. Still not showing, only this time when i boot the PC it hangs at the P4 logo screen then carries on to boot right through. The hard drive does not show in the My Computer section, but the hard drive on this one stays on continuously, which to me means that the IDE cable is the wrong way. But with the notches on the connector it can only go in one way. The cable in the caddy has a red stripe which is next to the power connector, and the cable from the caddy to the mobo has a blue stripe which again is next to the power connector. Both at Pin 1.

Any more help apprectiated.

[mike breck]

Well let's try to get the 80Gb with XP working first.

What brand and model of caddy, do you have?

Does the caddy indicate which pin is PIN 1?

Is the HD detected in the BIOS?

The caddies I have dont have an internal cable, merely an IDE connector on the back of the slide-out tray and a IDE connector on the inside of the fixed-frame. Both connectors slide together and lock when the tray handle is pressed down.

Jumper the HD to Cable Select and use an 80wire ATA66/100 IDE cable to connect the mobo to the connector on rear of the fixed-frame of caddy.

The blue connector goes to the mobo, the gray connector for a Slave, and the Black connector should go to the connector on the back of the fixed-frame of the caddy.

[Electron]

Hi Mike,

The 80GB with XP is working, it is the Master on the Primary IDE.
The Caddy i am trying to get working i want to Slave to this with the 40GB IBM.

It is a Saturn Series IDE-ME101P Awesome Mobile Rack made by macaseplus. The Caddy does not indicate Pin 1 but by the cut out on the surround of the pins the cable can only go in one way.

The HD is not detected in the BIOS (there is no option to detect hard drives) but by having this on Auto it detected the HD without the caddy.

The caddy works on the same principle you describe, but inside of the slide out try there is a short IDE cable that plugs into the hard drive, this has the usual red stripe and this is plugged into Pin 1 of the HD. There is also a power plug inside the slide out tray that plugs into the HD.

I have an 80 wire ATA100 IDE cable to the mobo, blue to the mobo, grey to the caddy and black to the 80GB XP drive.

Appreciate any further help.

[Electron]

Hi, turned on computer this morning with the caddy connected in the same way as above, a message came up Boot failure, system halted. I disconnected the caddy and everything booted fine.

I don't understand what is going on. As i said the IDE cables cannot go in any other way.

[Electron]

Bump. Any ideas.

[mike breck]

Right, I'm with you on the cable. I picked you up wrong and thought the fixed tray had an ATA cable as well.

Also, I thought you had tried the 80Gb in the caddy, on it's own, to see if that worked.

If the Slave HD is not detected in the BIOS, then that means the HD is not connected properly - somewhere.

Make sure the HD is firmly connected to the cable inside the removable tray.

Make sure the ATA100 IDE cable from the mobo is firmly connected to the back of the fixed-frame.

Ensure the removable tray is fully inserted into the fixed-frame before turning on the PC. With mine, you insert it with the handle in the upward position until it meets resistance and then push the handle down to make the connection.

Does your caddy have a "lock" - either a button or a key?

If so, the caddy may have to be locked before the HD is detected.

Always switch off the PC before inserting and removing the tray. In fact, I switch off the power at the wall socket as well - just to be safe.

You should really jumper both drives to Cable Select when using an 80 wire ATA100 cable to get the best performance out of them.

HTH

[Electron]

Thanks Mike for your replies. I have an even bigger problem now.

I had a bad feeling so i left the caddy in place but NOT plugged in, power or IDE, and started to prepare all my files for backing up on CD, as the 80Gb is not partitioned. Had the machine running on Monday with no problems, again on Tuesday just in the evening then at midnight the hard-drive kept banging, sounded like metal strikiing against metal, the HD light flashed at the same time as the bang, a warning then came up "System failure it will now shut down" save and close any programs, it also said something about System.exe.

I have just tried to boot up now (Wednesday) and i get a blue screen with UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME at the bottom it says technical data:-
0x000000ED (0x81F44030. 0xC0000032. 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

It will not boot any which way, Restore to last working config, Safe Mode, Normal, nothing.

I've checked IDE cables and power cables, the caddy is still disconnected, and essentially back to before i tried to fix in the caddy.

I read somewhere about using FIXBOOT from the Recovery Console on the XP CD, is this likely to fix this problem, and if it will can i access the Recovery Console from the Recovery CD i have. (Remember this is a ready built store bought machine with XP pre-installed).

As yet, everything is still on the HD as i didn't get a chance to backup to CD so i would really like to get my files back.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[mike breck]

Sorry to hear that Electron.

If the banging noise was in fact coming from your HD, then it sounds as though it may be physically failing. I don't think has anything to do with installing the caddy.

As you obviously have access to another PC, then download the Seagate Tools and follow the instructions to extract them to a floppy disk.

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/B7a.html

You can then boot your PC with the 80Gb HD off the floppy and run the tests. It should tell you how serious the problem is.

HTH

[Electron]

Thanks again Mike,

Have run the Seagate diagnostics, did the short test first and it passed. Happy!!
So i started the longer test, it said it would take approx. 90 secs per GB. Not realizing it was 12.30 (midnight) i clicked on continue, and then realized i was in for a long wait. Not so, about 3 minutes after starting i got a report saying:-

Error : 0x22, Ext Error : 0x00, Drive is defective.

Your drive has physical defects. These defects are severe enough to require replacing the drive.

So there goes another drive. I have had this computer for 10 months and i rarely use it because it seems to have so many problems. It originally came with a Western Digital Drive but that went south in September and was replaced with this Seagate HD. The computer is still under warranty so will have to get on to Pc World again to get the drive replaced.

Will it cause any problems to slave it to my old computer i am using at the moment to get some files off or is everything lost. I really could do without any further damage. I gave this one to the kids to use to keep them off of mine. I built this myself and apart from the motherboard needing replacing i have never had any problems with it in 6 years.

Thanks again i really appreciate your help.

[mike breck]

No, it won't do any harm to Slave it. At this stage, you should take every opportunity to retrieve your data - if you can access the HD.

See if you can get them to replace the HD with a Maxtor Diamond Max ATA100 7200 rpm. I've got two and many members have found them to be reliable.

Good luck.

[Electron]

I have been on to Pc World and they say this is a Windows XP problems and they cannot take the results of the Seagate Diagnostic Tool as a correct result. They want me to use the Recovery Discs to re-master the system.

If i do this i will lose all the data on the drive, and my above question of slaving it on the Win98SE computer will not work (i don't think) because XP is NTFS and Win98SE is FAT32 and will not recognize NTFS.

I have looked on the Microsoft site and it says:-
quote
The normal recovery process in such a case is to run the chkdsk /r command from Recovery Console, and then continue. On OEM versions of Windows XP, the Recovery Console may not be accessible. If this fix has not been included in the OEM build of Windows XP, you may not be able to enter Recovery Console and run the chkdsk /r command for recovery.
end quote

I was wondering if i made bootable floppy discs for WinXP would i be able to use this command from there to see if i can recover the disk.

The only other way i can see to retrieve any data is to use the Recovery discs on the IBM drive i tried in the caddy. But this has four partitions. Will it just put WinXP on the first partition and leave the other partitions alone? Because if all else fails i have a backup on the last partition from September.

Appreciate any help.

[Tuf]

It depends upon your Recovery Discs. Some do wipe the drive clean and start over. Others just reinstall over the top without formatting or anything. I would try to figure out why you have so many drives failing, it's certainly not normal.

[andyms18a]

you may have a prob with the power regulator on the mobo if the comp is still under warenty take it back and have them check it

[Electron]

Well i tried the recovery discs on the Seagate XP drive and it gave an option to recover the Windows files without destroying the data files, so i went ahead with that.
It has just finished now and on restart the computer just hung on a black screen with the advent logo in the top right hand corner. In the end i pressed the restart button. Everything loaded fine, only i had no data left. The drive is now quiet
I can't find Scandisc in XP. I went to My Computer>right clicked on the drive and chose Properties, on the Tools Tab i clicked Check Now on Error-Checking. At the end it shows a dialogue box saying Disk Check Complete, is this the same as Scandisc? This is the only report that PC World will accept. The last HD did have 4 bad sectors, but the Scandisc just ran on it's own after booting.
I am now installing SP1. Once this has finished i think i will run the Seagate Diagnostic again.

By doing some research on the Internet i found that this problem can occur with XP when a UDMA drive with caching is cabled on a 40 pin IDE cable. Although i am using an 80 pin cable, inside the caddy the connecting ribbon only has 40 pins. Thought i should add this so others are aware.

The man at the shop where i bought the caddies is a friend, so i asked his opinion of the drives failing, he said if i take it to the shop tomorrow he will check it out, so i am aware of any problems if i have to get back to PC World again.

I can't take the computer back to PC World because the procedure is to telephone a help line if they can't get it running by talking through any procedure they will send an engineer to your house, but they will not send an engineer out until the Recovery Discs have been used to reset the computer. They will not do any repairs at the shop.

Thanks again.

[Electron]

Well now the computer is running again the hard drive seems to be okay.

Now i have a problem with the IBM hard drive i was trying to put in the caddy. I removed the caddy and put the hard drive into the hard drive bay to get the backup from September and the Bios will not detect this hard drive now. I have tried with a new IDE cable but it made no difference. I have accessed this drive from the Slave on the IDE before, why won't it work now? Could this hard drive have a problem?

I feel like giving up, but now this is the only backup i have.

Thanks again.

[mike breck]

Go into the BIOS and make sure the Primary Slave is set to "Auto".

Check your jumpers - it should be jumpered as Slave or Cable Select depending on how you have the Seagate jumpered.
If you have the Seagate jumpered as Master, then jumper the IBM as Slave. Alternatively, if you have the Seagate jumpered as Cable Select, then jumper the IBM as Cable Select.

If you're sure it's jumpered correctly, then try another power lead that you know is working e.g. the one connected to the CD-Rom drive.

Try the IBM in the other PC (where it came from) to see if it's detected and can be accessed. Just jumper it the way you had it before, in that PC.

BTW Both ATA33 and ATA66/100 have 40 pin connectors - the difference is how many "wires" they have.

An ATA33 cable has 40 wires and an ATA66/100 cable has 80 wires (forty extra ground wires). You can tell which is which by just counting the wires on the piece of cable in the caddy. Just count the little bumps across the width of the cable. Each one is a wire. My caddy's have 80 wire cable inside the tray.

HTH

[Electron]

Thanks Mike,

While i was waiting i got the big tower out where the Hard Drive was originally and slaved the hard drive to it. The hard drive already in there was jumpered as master so i jumpered it as slave, went into the BIOS (this one has an option to auto-detect hard drives) so i went to this option. It did not find a hard drive on the slave, so left master and slave set to 'auto', saved and exited, left the computer to boot. It didn't!!
Hard disk fail.
Took the offending HD off again and all booted well.
When i tried it on the XP drive, i had them both set to Cable Select, i have tried different power leads. Still no go, the BIOS on both machines just doesn't detect the drive.

When i said pins before, i meant wires. I have just rechecked and there is 80 wires in the caddy.

This hard drive was working until i put it in the caddy, because i had it hooked up to the Seagate on it's own to transfer backups when the HD was replaced in September, but i took it out because from past experience both HD's got too hot sitting right on top of each other. So i just left it in long enough to transfer files.

Thanks again.

[mike breck]

Hi again Electron,

Is it possible the IBM was making the banging noise instead of the Seagate?

Download the IBM Fitness Test and run it on the HD

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/technolo/dft/dftnew.htm

Have a look at the IDE connector pins at the rear of the HD and make sure none is bent or damaged.

HTH

[Electron]

Hi Mike,
I thought of that but although the IBM drive was still in the caddy in the machine it didn't have power or IDE connectors attached. Could it still be the cause?

If i run a diagnostic on the IBM i would have to set it as Master on the IDE, (or CS at the end of the IDE) is that right?

While i am here, do you know what the warranty period is on OEM Hard Drive's, i bought it on it's own with no extras. It has a date stamp of Jan 2001. Just in case all is lost.

Thanks again.

[mike breck]

I'm sure you can set it as Slave (or Cable Select - depending on how you have the other HD jumpered. Remember, you only jumper HDs to CS if you are using an 80 wire IDE cable) both and the Fitness Test will detect all HDs on the PC and give you an option on which HD you wish to test. That's what the Seagate and Maxtor programs do - so I don't think the IBM one should be any different.

Just don't run the IBM program (or any brand specific program) on other brands of HDs, "unless" it specifically says you can. But even then, be very cautious.

Here is the Warranty info for IBM/Hitachi

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/en/w...y/english3.htm

Seagate contact info

http://www.seagate.com/contact/warranty/index.html

HTH

[Electron]

Hi again Mike,

The boot HD in the old machine is also an IBM, set on Master so i slaved the drive to it. But it seemed to knock out both drives. Is all i got was 'Hard drive fail'.

When i took it out again it booted up fine.

Will put it in as Master later, have to go out now.

Thanks again.