When a 2g WDC is dead

[kgb]

Hi,
Hope someone can answer this one. I'm trying to revive this 2g Hard drive (Western Digital Caviar) for the past month with no success. I have reason to beleive the drive is still good since i can slave it without a problem.
But i can't make the Bios (a Micron Pentium 133 system) reconize it as Master. Considering the jumper on the drive is set to Master, the bios wouldnt detected. Even if i hard coded the spec of the drive.

I did some switching around as installing the drive into another system which also failed as a master but not as a slave. Also had connected a brand new drive to the Micron P133 system which detected without a glitch.
One of you suggest to used the command fdisk /mbr but you can't use that command since it require to have the hard drive MASTER and ACTIVE and the system's bios do not reconize it as a master. So does this mean my WDC is dead??? or only good as a slave?

Have I exhaust all possiblities and hope to revive this drive??
Any suggestions are welcome.
do_g@hotmail.com
George

[Susan]

I'm not sure which model WD's drives they are, but there are some that prefer to have no jumpers on the drive at all when they are set to be master.

I wonder if removing the jumpers completely might help?

[Ygor]

I got a WD drive this year and discovered they have something I haven't seen on Maxtors. WD has not just Master & Slave, they also have a Sole Drive jumper setting.

This info is usually on the drive itself.

[scotter]

go here http://www.westerndigital.com/service/ftp/drives.html#dlgtools
and download western digitals data lifeguard tools program and use it to check the drive and set it up
you can also check the set p and jumper configurations from there site for that drive http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[GVolosky]

Remove all jumpers for master only.....
That should let it be recognized by the bios...

[Johnny]

Yep, if you are using it as a single drive remove the jumper. Just put my dads computer together, and had the same problem with the drive (WD 6.4) not being seen by the bios. Removed the jumper and it booted so fast I didn't have time to see it!

[Target]

Absolutely a jumper setting issue. Can be confusing depending on the lable on the drive. Some of the older WD's didn't mark it very well, and of course, there were both 6-pin and 10-pin ones.......so, get this Adobe Acrobat file from Western Digital, it should clear things up for you considerably.
http://www.westerndigital.com/acrobat/jumper.pdf

[kgb]

Well, i already read that pdf and not much for me to do. I havent' try the last suggestion of removing jumper from the harddrive and see how the BIOS system will detected.

Strange how that 2g WDC drive worked just fine, i fdisk it, repartition it twice and re-install Win98 twice and had no problem. Because some data was on the other system i slaved that 2g drive, copied whatever i need to copy and now the original system wouldnt reconize it as a master???? Can't understand this.

I hope there a way to fix this once in for all.

[Target]

Here is the jumper configurations for both the 10pin and 6pin WD 2gig hard disks. If setting as the master, one of the two should make it finally work. Note, the x's denote where the jumper is to be placed:

10-PIN DRIVES

9 7 5 3 1 Single drive(neutral position)
----------
o o x x o
o o o o o
----------
10 8 6 4 2


9 7 5 3 1 Single (standard installation)
---------- (ie: no jumpers)
o o o o o
o o o o o
----------
10 8 6 4 2


9 7 5 3 1 Dual (as Master)
----------
o o x o o
o o x o o
----------
10 8 6 4 2

9 7 5 3 1 Dual (as slave)
----------
o o o x o
o o o x o
----------
10 8 6 4 2


6-PIN DRIVES

5 3 1 Single (neutral position)
-----
x x o
o o o
-----
6 4 2

5 3 1 Single (standard installation)
----- (ie: no jumpers)
o o o
o o o
-----
6 4 2

5 3 1 Dual (set as Master)
-----
x o o
x o o
-----
6 4 2

5 3 1 Dual (set as Slave)
-----
o x o
o x o
-----
6 4 2

[kgb]

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you. One of you suggest to remove jumper on the drive. That was the solution. Once i removed the jumper, the BIOS from the Micron P133 detected as without a glitch. This is great stuff. Now i can sleep better.

Again, thank you for your response.

George
one darn happy customer hehehe.

[Target]

Congrats KGB on getting it to work, and sticking with it till it did.

[corvettedoctor]

OH MOMMA, It works, the jumpr removal worked. This is wierd, I've had this same hd as a master before with my new os and formated to rid the x-files from the previous owner and whamo, no work no mo. Used BC Wipe cuz da g/f unit is pewter literate and u no da rest. Thanks Target for the info on the deal of "single" not master, there's a big diff. later, thanks so much.

[AuraEdge]

Whoa
I have a assumably fried WDC 2.1 also!
Never tryed popping the jumper off tho
gotta try that sooooon!
maybe itll come back to life
.
maybe not
We'll see..
Ill be back here...if it jumps back to life

[AuraEdge]

Upon loookin at the drive again..it was a 4.3gig..
And its still dead..
oh well
cant get lucky every day

[Target]

Wooo Hooo Vette Doc!

Don't ya love it when a plan comes together? <lol>.

I actually had the exact same issue that you and Kgb did, with the same drive. It wasn't until I found the jumper diagram burried somewhere on the WD site, that I was able to figure it out.

Bummer Aura that yours turned out to be a 4.3 and that it was still dead. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif