Re: Hosed my system/fdisk can't read disk drive now.
ktb wrote:
> >
> > I had stuff on the disk but I meant to wipe it clean. What my problem
> > seems to be coming down to is my computer will no longer auto detect my
> > HD's. I had one HD (primary) with Windows 98 and (secondary) with
> > Slink. Now neither of my HD's are detected. I went into the bios
> > settings and selected "drive auto detect" and it shows nothing is
> > there. I manually set them to "auto" and still nothing is seen. I just
> > don't understand how creating a new partition valid in the eyes of
> > windows or not prevents my bios from detecting that there are HD's
> > there?
>
John Pearson wrote:
>
> It won't. If the BIOS doesn't see your drive then you need to fix
> that before any fdisk or partition-recovery software can work on it.
>
> Likely culprits are incorrect jumpers, missing power cables, and
> bad or misfitted ribbon cables.
>
> If you've had your case open, re-check that all your cables are
> seated correctly and verify that you don't have any that are
> "off-by-one-row-of-pins". Verify that the problem drive and any
> others on the same cable have power cables connected, and all
> pins are correctly seated (some drives will operate after a
> fashion with no power cable, presumably running off power sucked
> through the ribbon cable; sometimes when you insert a power
> cable the pin on the drive pushes its mate out of the power
> connector shell, rather than seating itself comfortably in the
> socket). If you have a spare ribbon cable, try replacing the one
> you're using now (if all else fails, get a known good one and do
> that anyway).
>
> If you've re-cabled or re-installed your drives, verify the
> jumper settings and try using the problem drive as a single
> master: some drives have problems acting as the master for some
> slaves, and vice versa.
>
This is a brand new computer. Everything was working fine until I
cfdisked the primary drive. Then the bios can't detect either of my
drives. The only one detected is my cdrom drive. I've swapped the
disks around, took the battery out and put it back in and fiddled with
the cables and such all to no avail. I just don't get this at all. One
person told me that cfdisk could corrupt the bios. I don't understand
how but maybe that is what has happened?
Thanks,
kent
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