Primary Hard Disk Fail on BIOS

[Anonymous]

i had a pc which shows " Primary Hard Disk Fail " error on BIOS screen each time i start my pc.

please tell me what's wrong with it? I have checked the jumpers, cables and everything seems ok..

[Dave@Bytes]

It might be a few things. If you are positive the connections are good, then you need to consider the possibility that either the hard drive is not set up properly in BIOS, or that you have a bad power dongle leading from the power supply, or a bad controller on the motherboard, or the drive itself has died.

You can eliminate the power supply by switching power leads with a device you KNOW works. You can also eliminate the IDE cable by either buying a new one or swapping it with the cd drive.

You can try manually setting the drive up in BIOS, which would mean inputting the drive info, such as SECTORS, CYLINDERS, etc.... you can sometimes get this info off the drive itself or from the manufacturer's web site.

If the motherboard has a bad controller, you can tell by either adding a PCI IDE controller card (around 20 bucks) or by putting that drive in another PC to see if it works.

A lot of detective work, but you can do it.

Let us know.

[Anonymous]

ok.. the hard drive is set up properly in the BIOS by setting the values of the SECTORS, HEADS, etc.. from the values on the hard drive.. which is correct... BUT when i restart it will display MAXTOR ATHENA as the Primary..

this is not normal because when the hard disk is ok, it will display Maxtor 8411...etc.. something like that as the Primary on the BIOS screen.

i had run a lot of diagnostics program from Maxtor.com, but the program will either hang or display an error message on locating the C: drive.

and one more thing that i noticed.. the hard disk light is blinking endlessly... in other words, the hard disk's red light shine but never stop.

p/s: can you guys help me on my recent thread..about the white smoke problem because it occurs just today.

[Dave@Bytes]

Are you familiar with the fdisk and format commands in DOS? I'd try repartitioning that drive either with the MAXTOR software or by using a Windows boot disk and fdisk-ing the drive.

If you're unfamiliar with those commands and need help, let us know. All data will be lost, but you probable already know that.

[Anonymous]

i tried Format C: ... but it said that it has trouble locating the C: drive..

i believe this should be a hard disk failure..

since my pc is "blown up", i guess i can't power on my pc right now.