WD800JB SATA problem

R

rich998

Geek Trainee
I've a 2 drive set-up. My main drive is an IDE Caviar WD800JB and the second drive is a Caviar SATA WD800JB.

Everything was working fine up to a day ago. When clicking on 'my computer' drives C: and F:(the SATA) were there. The computer recognised the specific drive numbers and details and the system bootup repeated the SATA drive as WD800....etc.

However, now the IDE drive continues to work fine (thank god!) but the SATA drive has renamed itself as a WDC Mammoth (whatever that is). I've also had the drive clicking on bootup and have looked at the knowledge base on the site. I've got a cheap SATA cable at the moment and I hope that is the problem as I've ordered a Western Digital type specialist SATA cable.

All the DATA LIFEGUARD v11 has been able to do is tell me that the drive cannot be checked due to the cable giving problems but another diagnostic - the online one that WD provide - tells me there is a serious problem with the data on the SATA drive.

Has anyone experienced this problem. Are the SATA data cables really that unreliable - this system has only been running for 3 months? Am I barking up the wrong tree and there is something else that I have missed? Any feedback would be much appreciated.

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This morning I have done some more tests.

I removed the data cable from the SATA and listened for the clicking. The clicking only occured on bootup and stops when the windows screen appears. This is ALSO what happens when the data cable is connected.

The exact drice label is now WDC ROM MODEL-MAMMOTH SCSI with a serial number SN#XYZ.

I ran Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Online Diagnostic. This repoted errors on the SATA drive and started a 'Quick Repair'. After about 40 minutes the program repoted multiple errors and suggested I backup immediately. I'd love to but it's too late I think.
 
sounds like a bad HD, if you can still access the HD backup anything important! you should be able to get WD to send you a replacement drive if its only 3 months old?
 
Ok - I accept after running various recovery software that the drive is dead.

How do I go about formatting it? I can't select that drive letter in the 'My Computer' window. Is there some software I can use?
 
Pop in a windows install CD, I'm sure you've got one. If not western digital supplies a CD for their drives that probably has a formatting tool on it. Again, if not you can download pretty much any linux distro and it will come with a formatting tool. Just boot to either of the cd's and follow an install process on the drive, during the install process it should indicate the drive in need of formatting.

If it does not recognize the drive, it is dead. WD should give you a replacement
 
If you cannot select the letter in my computer, then the drive is not being recognized thus-not respoding=dead.
 
If your hard drive is not shown in My Computer, it does not necersarily mean it is dead..

Try this:
Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

Now you have a menu area to your left and a details / description box on your right, on the left under your computer which should be listed as: "Computer Management Tool (Local)" goto the "+Storage" option, and click on "Disk Management"

In the right box, the program will detect all your hard drives / partitions, if they are active / not active, size used & free, drive letters e.t.c

Look there, if you can see your drive that your having problems with right click on it, Select "Format" from the menu then after you have partitioned the drive, right click on the drive in "Disk Management" again and click "Mark Partition as Active"

Most likely if this works it's probably due to corruption of part of the Operating System or such.. So a reinstall would be a good idea.

If this does not work, try and use your diagnostic tools for your SCSI drive that you get when you boot up your computer, in the bios, you should be able to format via that, or atleast detect any errors / or if the drive is present.

If you do reinstall your operating system i would highly suggest trying to grab any new / updated SCSI drivers for your hard drive.
 
^that was what I was going to suggest as well. Unless it's been formatted and assigned a letter, it will not show up under My Computer.
 
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