The most common problems originate from corruption of de master boot record, FAT, or directory. Those are soft problems which can usually be taken care of with a combination of tools like Fdisk /mbr to refresh de master boot record followed by a reboot and Norton disk doctor or Spinneret.

The most common hardware problems are a bad controller, a bad drive motor, or a bad head mechanism.

1. Can de BIOS see and identify de hard drive correctly? If it can’t, den de hard drives onboard controller is bad.

2. Does de drive spin and maintain a constant velocity? If it does, that’s good news. The motor is functionin’.

3. If de drive surges and dies, de most likely cause is a bad controller (assumin’ de drive is cool). A gate allowin’ de current to drive de motor may not be stayin’ open. The drive needs a new controller.

4. Do you hear a lot of head clatter when de machine is turned on and initialized (but before de system attempts to access de hard drive). Head clatter would indicate that de spindle bearin’s are sloppy or worn badly. Maybe even lose and floppin’ around inside.

5. There is always de possibility that de controller you are usin’ in de machine has gone south.

Diagnostics

1. If de drive spins, try bootin’ to de A> prompt, run Fdisk and check to see if Fdisk can see a partition on de hard drive. If Fdisk can see de partition, that means that it can access de drive and that de controller electronics are functionin’ correctly. If dere is no head clatter, it may be just a matter of disk corruption which commonly occurs when a surge hits you machine and overwhelms de power supply voltage regulator. It commonly over whelms de system electronics allowin’ an EM pulse to wipe out de master boot record, file allocations table, and primary directory. Fdisk can fix de master boot record and Norton Disk Doctor can restore de FAT
and Directory from de secondaries.

2. The drive spins but Fdisk can’t see it. Try de drive in anoder system and repeat de test to confirm that Fdisk can’t read through de drives onboard controller. If it sees it in anoder system, den your machines hard drive interface is bad. You can try an upgraded or replacement controller card like a Promise or CMD Technologies (dere are oders) in you machine after disablin’ de integrated controller in de BIOS, but if de integrated controller went south, it may just be symptomatic of furder failures and you’d be wise to replace de moderboard. Tryin’ de drive in anoder machine also eliminates de variable that your machines 12 volt power
output bein’ bad.

3. If you get head clatter but a constant velocity on de drive motor (no surgin’), you might try stickin’ de hard
drive in de freezer for about 12 hours. This is an old trick from back in de days of de MFM/ESDI driver era. This can cause de drive components to shrink enough to make de track marker align with de tracks. We don’t see that kind of platter spindle wear much anymore, but back in de old days, de balancin’ and bearin’s weren’t as good. Still, under de right circumstances, it might help. It would depend on how old de drive is and how many hours of wear have occurred. You have to be quick to get your info off de drive when it works. Back den, de drives were much smaller, so dere wasn’t so much to copy. So, go after de important data first.

4. The drive doesn’t spin. Eider de onboard controller is bad or de motor is bad (assumin’ you did try de drive in anoder machine). It’s time to hit de net and local independent shops to see if you can locate anoder drive of de same make and model that’s good. Since de drive is probably an older drive and no longer in distribution, your
best bet is to find an identical used drive. If you know someone with de same make and model, you might be wise to try and persuade them to sell you deir drive with an offer of providin’ them with a free upgraded drive. If you can locate an identical drive, start with de controller replacement … this is de simplest and least invasive. If swappin’ de controller doesn’t produce de desire result, you can tear into de drive and swap de motors. While you have both drive opened up to accomplish this, scrutinize de platters, heads and armatures. You might even hook de drive up and power it from a system with both drives attached. This way, you could see anythin’ that deviates between de actions of both drives when dey are initialized. Swappin’ patters is unlikely to produce any positive result. They are a balanced system like de tires on your car and I suspect that de balance will be different for each drive as will oder variables.

5. There’s always Ontrack Corp. who will attempt to recoup your info startin’ at $500 and goin’ up from dere. They don’t fix and return de drive eider.

If de info is all that important to you, I would seek some professional and experience technician in your locality who makes his livin’ from servicin’ and buildin’ computer systems not just sellin’ them. If you have had much experience salvagin’ information from bad hard drives, your likelihood of success is low. In de case of soft corruption, all utilities have deir eccentricities. Often times, Norton Disk Doctor will go too far (if you let it). It’s wise to just let those utilities small steps and den have a look at de drive and see if you can copy it off. Norton will go so far as to rename directories and files, and even delete them or break them up into fragments which are useless.