iLAMP

When a hard disk fails and the computer doesn’t boot, the frenzy to save important company data ensues. When faced with such a problem, don’t panic. Just remember these simple hard drive troubleshooting tips.

Here’s a quick and proven hard disk troubleshooting process. With each point, ask yourself the question(s) that follow.

* Physical connectivity--Is the drive receiving power? Is it plugged into the PC by a correctly connected ribbon cable? For an IDE drive, are its jumpers set correctly? With a SCSI drive, are its SCSI termination and ID set correctly?
* BIOS setup--Does the BIOS see the drive?
* Viruses--Does the drive contain any boot sector viruses that need to be removed before continuing?
* Partitioning--Does FDISK find a valid partition on the drive? Is it active?
* Formatting--Is the drive formatted using a file system that the OS can recognize?
* Drive errors--Is a physical or logical drive error causing read/write problems on the drive?
* Operating system--Does your OS have a feature that checks the status of each drive on your system? If so, what is that status?