[rod]

Built a new computer a couple of months ago. Got me a nice big 1 TB hard drive for about 80 bucks. Seems to good to be true, doesn't it? Well it just may be. After installing a bunch of programs, transferring files, etc. I decided to use the windows defragmenter to keep everything nice and packed down. After I defragged the drive, it was running incredibly slow. Didn't really make much sense. I used a couple of other defrag programs to try and fix it and Defraggler seemed to fix it up a bit. Wasn't quite as fast, still had a few hangups in the seek time, but it made it better at least.

Time goes by, I get a worm on the PC from a DVD viewing program, have to reinstall windows and some of my programs. Runs fine for a good month, then it slows down, and slows down some more, and then some more. I decide to scan for bad sectors. I get a program that scans and recovers bad sectors, and it finds 1956 bad sectors in the 180 GB of memory I was using. Recovers.... most of them. On reboot windows does a file check scan and all of the recovered sectors are marked as "unreadable." Windows boots up and it looks like all the drivers were torn up a bit and the PC is moving ridiculously slow. Like an old packard bell in a furnace. I try getting to "My Computer" so I can back up all of my data before I decide to nuke the thing.

After waiting for about 10 minutes and the right-click menu not popping up, I turn off the computer and try to connect the HDD to another PC so I can back everything up. Unfortunately the HDD I'm using is SATA and the other PC's in the house are old ATA prefabs. I put the HDD back in my PC and try to boot. It hangs at the OS preloader (white dashed bar that will fill up just before the windows logo pops up). I try safe mode and it hangs up on the third .dll that it's loading. I grab a ATA HDD from an older PC and hook it to the mobo figuring I could boot from that and have the decrepit HDD as a slave. I get a blue screen on boot-up. I try booting from the old HDD from my laptop upgrade days, another blue screen. I try booting from a disk with the current 1 TB HDD plugged in: boot failure. Now the HDD is beeping and clicking like a heart monitor in an operating room. I'm half expecting it to "flatline."

So, I install regular windows XP professional on the tiny HDD from the laptop upgrade (rather than the media edition that was on it) and I remove the HDD from the external enclosure so I can just hook it to the mobo. Success at last. I then hook the 1TB HDD to the external SATA port on my PC, nothing happens, still beeping. I boot from a disk, then plug in the 1TB hdd (still beeping) and one of the programs identifies the drive. Now it stops beeping, finally getting somewhere! I try hooking both the HDD's to the mobo and go into the CMOS to set up a master/slave hard drive, nothing is there. I reboot with just the small HDD plugged in, there's all my CD drives and such in the CMOS. Unplug the small HDD, plug in the large one, start up again, everything is gone again.



Whatever is wrong with this HDD, it blocks my BIOS from recognizing my components and I can't boot from anything. I can't copy my data from it, not can I nuke it. Know any possible solutions? Or is it time to put away my new PC until I can afford to buy a new HDD?

My arsenal includes:
1 TB SATA HDD (problem drive)
60 GB laptop SATA HDD (holds an old backup, missing lots of current app data and documents)
SATA to USB connection with an enclosure case
External SATA hookup
Easily installable copy of Windows XP Performance edition
Ultimate boot disk
dBAN

I'm using a "GIGABYTE" Mobo, so it tends to do some more interesting things compared to the mobos gateway and dell sell (includes a specific overclocking section in the setup menu, have yet to play with it :D )