JIM HOLSONBACK wrote to JAMES BRADLEY, "Win9E Harddrivicide? REV"

 JB> Who here remembers the origin of this thread?

 JH> Oops!  I'm the guilty party.

Sorry I butchered the title. (Feeling like I broke copyright.) It's a long
story. I seem to be back in business with the pig, but what a quandary! I think
I have soused out Murphy by now, but he was sure practising his curve balls.

 JB> You'll never guess, but I formated my C: partition this morning, was
 JB> shoving W98FE into it, and when it went to the reboot... NO FRIGGIN'

 JH> No firm answer from here, just a few thoughts - -

I think the bottom line is I have one newly expended drive, that must have been
on its last leg when I tried to push it into service. What had me scratching my
head, was that the drive that was bundled with the system, (At auction, so one
expects some flaky gear.) developed bad blocks through the wazoo, and was
allocated to the shelf. The Bigfoot, (Bought at the same auction, but as new
w/o warranty.) stopped working a couple of times, which seemed fixed by
fiddling with the data cable. That fiddling must have hidden the true cause of
the trouble, as this time it scrambled the FAT, which led me to crimp the power
connector a bit, which seemed to smarten it up. Off to the races? Not quite!

Enter drive #3. Works fine. Has '98 already w/Norton's' full compliment of
utilities, bada-bing... I'm off to the races! Not quite. It goes down! Well, if
Murphy would butt out for me to catch my breath!!!

Back to the bottom line, two drives botched on the same controller, and the
Bigfoot remaining in service since 2000. The Bigfoot, I just formated C:, but
the CD boot wouldn't allow me to /s, or 'sys' it. No worries, as the system was
done with the SETUP. (Holding breath now.)


 JH> You FDISKed the slave and made its primary partition "Active?"

Bigfoot went from the single master, to slave. New drive went to master until I
removed it. I guess the IDE channel was 'shorted out' from seeing the slave? I
had just moved the dead drive to NONE in the BIOS IDE-0 slot, and was able to
work on the Bigfoot in the IDE-1 spot without any trouble, to a point. Since
removing the bad drive from the equation, and 'single-master' jumpering the
Bigfoot again, I seem to have full control again.

 JH> When it went to reboot, which drive would the system try to
 JH> reboot? I've never tried just what you describe, but seems that
 JH> having two drives with two active partitions on a single IDE
 JH> channel might cause problems on reboot, if that's what you did.

No, I've had two active FWIR. For that matter, I had the Bigfoot active but
scrambled, and supplanted it with the Seagate. The Seagate booted fine until it
died.
 JH>  Unless you are set up and jumpered for Cable Select, have you
 JH> also made sure that the slave drive is jumpered for slave?
 JH> YMMV.

Things was peachy, and all partitions were available from the Bigfoot.

 JH> Just to mention, In some recent drive-swapping here, after
 JH> clearing out SETUP and attemting to have the onboard BIOS
 JH> Autodetect the reattached drives, it generally has been taking
 JH> more than one attempt to correctly autodetect the attached
 JH> drives.  I haven't found any pattern to that, but know for sure
 JH> that it sometimes happens.

Huh... I'll have to try to resurrect the two IDEs that seem dead. They are only
1-1.6 G in size, but plenty for a Linux install! Like I say, the first that
died in the rig was in the package deal, (READ: Take it or leave it: Leave it
and expect criminal charges.) but the second drive to die in it, was a little
more troubling. 

I think I do have to log the two dead drives as being a coincidence at this
time. Maybe the first was lost to intermittent power loss, or just being flaky
from the factory. Hopefully, crimping the plug will prevent further damage to
the Bigfoot. The second drive to die, was flaking out for the previous owner
too, so I have to suspect it was about to die also. But that in concert with
the Bigfoot "just stopping" both as a master, and as a slave. had
me a little
bamboozled. I think time will be the tester, and if something funky happens to
it, I'll have to quarantine the controller channel. 

 JH> Have you tried disconnecting the slave and seeing if it will
 JH> autodetect your original drive?  Did you try autodetecting the
 JH> drives, one at a time, on your secondary IDE channel?

That will happen at leisure. Health issues.

 JH> Sounds about right.  I have had an IDE channel just up and die
 JH> before, but seems like a big coincidence here.  In some recent



 JH> Bigfoot was a Quantum tradename.  I haven't heard a lot of good
 JH> things about that line, but seems unlikely the drive would die
 JH> and take out its neighbor, all at the same time as trying to
 JH> instal Winders.

Right you are! The Quantum Bigfoot line were slow, lumbering beasts at the time
they were released. I have never heard any reliability issues regarding them
though. I've had two here in service since 2000, and until this incident,
nothing to speak of in trouble.

 JH> One bright spot about your situation - - at least you aren't
 JH> having to deal with Linux and an add-on controller card all at
 JH> the same time.

Hey... Quiet about that! <-;

 JH> Anyway, good luck with it, and I'd like to hear what you
 JH> finally figure out.

I figure I'm an idiot for a Captain, adrift in a ugly sea.  

What else you need to know? <-;

Thanks for you interest, Jim!


... The squeaky wheel might get REPLACED!
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