Hard drive errors

Question

I have a 8200 dell that runs XP Pro.  When i try to boot i receive the following error: 'Read Disk Error has occurred'. When I rebooted and tried to boot to safe mode or boot from the repair disk I get the follow message:  Dell Disk Monitoring System has dedected that the O drive on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications'.  I assuming that my HD is going out!  is there a way to save my information or is it lost?  If i have replace the HD, what would be the best HD set up for my dell 8200.  Thank for the help!!!

ejn63 · Answer

The drive is either dying or dead - yes, it needs to be replaced. You can use any parallel ATA (EIDE) drive you wish.

You may or may not be able to save the data on the existing drive, depending on how far gone it is. Best bet is to either mount it in another system running the same OS you have now, and try copying it - that's really the only option if the system will not boot from the drive.

Alternatively, disconnect the old drive, install a new one, reinstall Windows, patch fully, reinstall your application software, and then try connecting the old drive as a slave, to see if you can read it. If the drive is still readable, you may be able to get some or all of your data back. If the drive is completely unreadable, you'll need to resort to Ontrack, Drive Savers, etc., for professional data recovery - word of warning, though, that such services are not inexpensive and will run into the thousands of dollars.

dblbrown · Answer

Thanks for the information.  Do you reccommend a paritcular brand of HD.  Also, what is all the talk regarding RAID 0  or  RAID 1.  What are the benfits and is it possible to due with dim 8200.  Again thanks for the help.

ejn63 · Answer

RAID 0 purportedly improves performance (the data is striped across two drives). In practice, it makes little difference on a desktop system. The downside is that you double your chances of data loss (lose either drive and you lose everything).

RAID 1 is redundant - a pair of drives, the second of which mirrors the first. It provides protection against a single drive failure at the cost of a second drive (you get, say, 120GBytes total capacity out of a pair of 120 GByte drives. It is NOT backup - it is redundancy.

For either, you'll need to install a RAID controller; the 8200 does not have one onboard.

As to drive make, choose WD, Seagate, Hitachi or Samsung for desktop drives. Maxtor is having reliability issues with many of its drives at the moment.

dblbrown · Answer

Could i use the following HD in my dell dim 8200 system running XP PRO.  Segate Barracuda 7200.7 80 GB serial ATA-100 8 MB.  Part #ST 380013ARK.    thanks for the help

dblbrown · Answer

Thanks again!!! i just order two HD's for my system.

ejn63 · Answer

Yes. Very nice series of drives - the 7200.7, that is. Quiet and reliable.

Storage, Drives & Media

Hard drive errors

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