[TimTechSF]

Please, help! Years ago, I both a very powerful pc with 200 gb hard disk. Last year, I installed an extra hard disk with 80 gb but the pc was still booting from the 200 gb. Yesterday I removed the 80 gb and put a very old hard disk to recover some files for an old women who ask me for the recovery of a file in this old hd. After inserting the old hd, my computer did not boot. When I failed to recover the file. I r anemoved the old hd and placed again my own 80 gb hard disk. Unfortunately, my pc does not boot any more. After Intel logo this massage is seen in the black screen: "updating ESCD .... success", or only the black screen with the cursor flashing.
I did the following but the problem is not yet solved:
- I changed boot-sequences
- I set the bios to default setting
- I removed the 80 gb and placed it again
I appreciate your help and your comments, in advance.
Tim

 

[spunk.funk]

It sounds like there is a hardware problem either the CD/DVD is not plugged in, or the HDD. Check all connections of Drives, make sure they are plugged in tightly and that the cables and jumper pins are set correctly. Boot into Setup (Bios) do you see your 200 Gb HDD listed? If not, go back to step one. Make sure the Boot order is CD/DVD rom drive First boot device, and 200 GB HDD second device.

 

[TimTechSF]

Thank you spunk.funk,
thank you for your quick reaction to my post "updating ESCD ... success" I am going to check all connections again. In fact I did not touch the 200 gb which is the booting disk. How could this booting hd be affected when I replaced the 80 gb. I do not know what the jumper pins are. Do you mean those in the hd's. If so, I did not change these jumpers, either. My hd's are listed but as I saw, the 80 gb was definitely listed as 80 gb but the 200 gb was listed as 32 with a lot of zero's, or I am mistaken. It should be 2 with a lot of zero's to represent 200 gb.
Tim

 

[spunk.funk]

It depends on if the Bios lists the Drive in MB's or Gigabytes. If your 200 GB HDD jumper pin (for and IDE drive not a SATA) and you added an the very old drive that jumper pin was also Master, then neither drive would be visible (See Pic)
Also, in the process of moving drives around, you may have inadvertently pulled the plug on the CD/DVD drive or put the IDE cable in backward or pulled that out etc.

 

[TimTechSF]

Dear spunk.funk,
I checked but there was no problem with hardware. I remember now that one year ago I reinstalled xp but something went wrong and I reinstalled the xp again. this time it was working properly but before booting, it gave me always two option for xp. both were the same xp but one of them did not work because this was not installed properly. If I did not choose after 20 seconds the first option was booting which was working. If I choose the second option, I got a black screen with a massage that xp misses a file and can not load. Now I do not get the massage but just the black screen. How can I boot from the same partition with two xp installed with the option to choose the good one.
Tim

Hi, and I hope you had a good day. Let met tell you what I did to find my pc problem. I branded a Linux cd using my laptop with the option to run OS Ubuntu 11.10, 32-bit. As I said before, I had two hd's: 200 gb which was primary master and 80 gb primary slave. In the bios, I see both of them with the information about them such as the capacities. When I run linux Ubuntu from the cd (without installation) I see the primary slave drive of 80 gb and I can open all files in it but I Ubunto can not show the primary master 200 gb. What do you think about this? I am going to post this to everybody in order to get others opinions too and I hope to hear from you as well.
Tim

Hallo everybody, My pc bios detects the primary master and primary slave hard disks but xp does not loads. After Intel logo I see the massage "updating ESCD ... success" but forther it does noting except flashing the cursor. Using my laptop, I branded a Linux cd with the option to run OS Ubuntu 11.10, 32-bit. I have two hd's: 200 gb which is primary master and 80 gb primary slave. In the bios, I see both of them with the correct information about them such as the capacities. When I run linux Ubuntu from the cd (without installation) I see the primary slave drive of 80 gb and I can open all files in it but the Ubunto can not show the primary master 200 gb. What do you think about this when bios shows the 200 gb drive but Linux Ubentu does not? Any comment is welcome and I hope you share anything you know about this issue. I thank you all in advance.
Tim

 

[Wand3r3r]

Re: Booting issue: "updating ESCD ... success"

flashing cursor indicates no master boot record. usual fix is run recovery console and run the utilities fixmbr and fixboot.
but your additional info of ubuntu not seeing the drive indicates the drive maybe dead.

I would suggest you id the drive manufacturer and go to their web site and download their diagnotics and run them.

 

[TimTechSF]

Re: Booting issue: "updating ESCD ... success"

Dear Wand3r3r,
Thank you for your reaction. Since I am not able to run xp which is already on the hard disk, I must find the xp cd en run the program from in order to run recovery console, fixmbr en fixboot. I is possible to download these files microsoft en run from Ubuntu or is it only possible from xp cd.
Tim

 

[Wand3r3r]

Re: Booting issue: "updating ESCD ... success"

You should start with the drive manufactures utilities first.

You need a xp cd. You can use a friends xp cd if they have one.

 

[TimTechSF]

Re: Booting issue: "updating ESCD ... success"

yes, as you advised, for my hd's utilities or recovery tools, I am going to check the manufacturer's website, soon.
If I make a progress, I will inform you. Thanks for now.
Tim

 

[fzabkar]

I suspect that you move a jumper on the 200GB drive. The reduced capacity (32GB ?) suggests that you have confused the Master jumper with an Alternate Capacity jumper, or something similar. Some IDE drives had such a jumper to limit their capacity to 32GB for compatibility reasons.

BTW, it would have helped if you had supplied the model numbers.

 

[spunk.funk]

Please do not post more then one thread about the same problem. It confuses us that are trying to help you. I have merged both of your threads together.
Download the ISO image for Drive Fitness in my signature and burn the Image to CD using IMGBurn also in my signature. Boot off of the newly created CD and run the Short and Extended tests on your HDD's. It sounds like you don't have the 200 GB drive plugged in correctly or it has failed. The test will you tell.

 

[TimTechSF]

I suspect that you move a jumper on the 200GB drive. The reduced capacity (32GB ?) suggests that you have confused the Master jumper with an Alternate Capacity jumper, or something similar. Some IDE drives had such a jumper to limit their capacity to 32GB for compatibility reasons.

BTW, it would have helped if you had supplied the model numbers.

Hallo fzabkar,
thank you for your comment. I looked at HD information on de HD. I see now that 32 with zero's which bios shows is the model number: ST32200021A. this is exactly what bios shows. But when I run the Linux Ubuntu from the CD I see the other drive but not this one. As I said before, I have two hd's. One primary master the other primary slave. Both are detected by bios correctly but Ubuntu detects only the slave.
As Wand3r3r suggests, I must first check the HD using the recovery tool of the manufacturer which I have not found yet.
Tim

 

[fzabkar]

I think you mean ST3200021A, in which case you need Seagate's SeaTools diagnostic.

 

[TimTechSF]

De diagnostic test by SeaTools is done. The short test found no error but the long test which took two and half hour failed. It means my hd must be replaced. My concern is now the files. Not important information though, to pay for recovery but the recovery of photo's and video's of my two kids who are now 4 and 2 years old are to my interest. Any suggestion to recover these photo's and video's are welcome. But I think there is farther no thread needed.
I thank the Tech Support team and my special thanks goes to:

spunk.funk
Wand3r3r
fzabkar

for comments and threads.

Tim
:flowers:

 

[fzabkar]

The long test scans each sector on the drive. The fact that it ran for 2.5 hours before failure would suggest that there is at least one bad sector near the end. Otherwise the drive seems OK, in which case it appears that your drive has a corrupted file system.

The safest approach in this case would be to clone the drive, sector by sector, and then use data recovery software on the clone. I suspect that Ubuntu can see the physical drive but cannot mount its file system.

A good freeware utility for cloning drives with bad sectors is ddrescue.

 

[TimTechSF]

The long test scans each sector on the drive. The fact that it ran for 2.5 hours before failure would suggest that there is at least one bad sector near the end. Otherwise the drive seems OK, in which case it appears that your drive has a corrupted file system.

The safest approach in this case would be to clone the drive, sector by sector, and then use data recovery software on the clone. I suspect that Ubuntu can see the physical drive but cannot mount its file system.

A good freeware utility for cloning drives with bad sectors is ddrescue.

Dear fzabkar,
Thank you for the thread. It has given me a hope again to make my hd working or at least recovering my files. I am going to look for the software ddrescue. In fact, when using ubuntu, I am not able to access the master hd but only when I used SeaTool Dos cd. To use ddrescue, I must lunch ubuntu from cd and download the software on the slave drive. When the master drive is not detected, I don't think it works. Is there any data recovery or cloning software which can be run in Dos such as the SeaTool runs.
Thank you very much in advance,
Tim

 

[fzabkar]

The only DOS tool that I know of that can handle bad sectors is COPYR.DMA. However, it is limited to 128GiB drives.

That said, you should be able to find a bootable CD with ddrescue:
SystemRescueCd
Ddrescue - Forensics Wiki

 

[TimTechSF]

Thank you. this is a good idea. but the two links did not work. I am going to just search and type that in google.
Tim

 

[fzabkar]

Both links worked for me just now.

 

[TimTechSF]

Ok the links are open now. I used firefox first and then IE but the could not open them. When I used firefax again, it worked. Now I am reading and I am going to burn the cd.
thanks
tim