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Home / I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Stuff Something is killing my IBM drives problems with IBM drives

Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) Millennium_Falcon Profile | Email I have installed two IBM Travelstar 4.8 gig drives into my IO (at different times of course) Both have died untimely deaths. They get to where they cannot be read. They run for a week or two then die. The symptoms include excessive seeking and occasional loud "clacks" and an inability to boot. Then when I try to FDISK them using the floppy boot on the desktop so I can start over I get a message "Warning, drive 1 cannot be accessed". So I cannot even start over, they are just dead. BUT.......if I then go to drive C: Its there and accessable. But the FAT seems to be bad. Is there something in the IO that could be reconfiguring the drives to be unreadable? 03-20-2001 15:00:30

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) Ragnar Profile Don't give up on them just yet. I have several drives that I swap in and out of my laptop and my i-openers. I had the same problems for a time. I found the best solution is to go into the cmos each time you swap a drive and let the cmos detect the drive. Usually the drives will boot up without a problem. Also, check the partition setting. Changing it the the right setting for each particular drive is fairly crucial. These two steps have saved me from trashing a couple of $$ drives. 03-20-2001 22:48:07

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) Kudzu Profile It might be the ram. I've had two go wonky on me until I swapped out the ram I was using, after which it worked like clockwork. You may want to try docmemory, from http://www.simmtester.com, if you have a spare hard drive around. 03-21-2001 07:02:01

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) Millennium_Falcon Profile | Email The drive is being detected correctly by the bios and in fact I can change to C: and do a "DIR" on it and see the files on the root directory. However I cannot change directorys because I get a message that the Fat is bad. I cant change the partitioning because when I go into FDISK it tells me the drive is inaccessable. Jim 03-21-2001 09:37:39

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) ckbone Profile Why don't you hook them up in a normal computer as a second drive. Then run partition magic on it....that program has saved many of my hard drives. You just delete the partition(s) on it, create a new partition, format it, etc. This is a more powerful program than F-disk. 03-21-2001 17:42:19

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) Millennium_Falcon Profile | Email Where does one finf Partition Majic 03-22-2001 20:16:39

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) ttn1 Profile | Email Pretty much any computer software store. Best Buy, Office depot, etc. It's relatively inexpensive. Although there is an alternative to try. Go to IBMs website and download their harddrive utility. This will almost always read, repartition and format a harddrive. I haven't used the IBM utility much, but the western digital utility works wonders. There is also a script for a program called debug, that comes with windows. This script will wipe the drive completely and then fdisk will work. I have the script somewhere, but can't find it right now. My suggestion would be to try the utility from IBM first. ttn2 03-23-2001 03:54:07

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) WanneBe Profile You've probably already done this; but the settings for the drive in the BIOS needs to be correct. Sometimes autodetect detects the wrong settings or defaults the wrong setting. If you're using a desktop and a adapter intially, the autodetect could have given you a different setting than the one the I-opener defaults to. If it was formatted with a different settings, you will see some files. The drive will appear to work normally (i.e. DIR, CD ); but, you will get some flaky problems. I would start over and make sure the bios setting matches the drive's requirements, repartition and reformat. When it's installed on the I-Opener, make sure the bios settings match. 03-23-2001 09:25:13

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) r_fl_z Profile | Email Millennium_Flacon: I can offer some help getting hold of Partition Magic if you would find that useful, however your email is bouncing. Drop me a line if interested. 03-23-2001 12:57:19

IBM Drives have a recovery program (modified 0 times) leighklotz Profile If you go the IBM web site, there is a drive reformat program. It's a very low-level format and it recovered a 2.1GB IBM drive I had gotten in a laptop at a garage sale. You put the drive in a laptop, put the floppy in, and run it. It lays down new timing tracks or something, using special IBM knowledge about the drive. 03-23-2001 15:03:29

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) thecounts Profile | Email leighklotz, Can you post a link to that IBM utility, or at least the name of the utility? IBM's website is HUGE and, in my opinion, VERY poorly - or at least strangely - organized. Without a name for the utility or other specific info, finding something on their site is like looking for a needle in a wire factory (much harder than looking for one in a haystack ). Thanks 03-23-2001 20:23:58

Link to IBM site (modified 0 times) leighklotz Profile I went to IBM, Support, Storage, Hard Disks and got this page: http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/welcome.htm The program is "Drive Fitness." The first part of it says it just tests the drive, but the second part says Restores drive fitness (overwrites customer data) * Erase Bootsector utility (use DFT Utility option: Erase Boot Sector) * Low-level format utility (use DFT Utility option: Erase Disk) Note: Both utilities will overwrite all customer data and allow repair of bad sectors. 03-26-2001 18:22:58

RE:Something is killing my IBM drives (modified 0 times) thecounts Profile | Email leighklotz - thanks for the link...... 03-26-2001 20:37:35

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