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I'm not sure where to go with this problem. If this group is not appropriate
I'd appreciate a nudge in the right direction. I have an old Alcam Pentium
233 laptop that I bought a new 30GB Fujita hard drive for. I installed the
drive and left. When I came back my son was messing with various Linux
distro's I have. He's not sure what he did but now the drive isn't
recognized by any of the Linux cd's. When booting the bios sees the drive
but that is it. I pulled out my Windows XP cd and when it came to installing
it a message came up that there was no hard drive! As I write this I have
Disk-Repair running on it to see if there are any bad sectors. Any advice
would be appreciated.


PS My son doesn't remember what distro he was using when this problem
occurred. He is now in the penalty box until further
notice......................or until I fix this brand new drive.

"LenBum" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]. ..
> I'm not sure where to go with this problem. If this group is not
> appropriate I'd appreciate a nudge in the right direction. I have an old
> Alcam Pentium 233 laptop that I bought a new 30GB Fujita hard drive for. I
> installed the drive and left. When I came back my son was messing with
> various Linux distro's I have. He's not sure what he did but now the drive
> isn't recognized by any of the Linux cd's. When booting the bios sees the
> drive but that is it. I pulled out my Windows XP cd and when it came to
> installing it a message came up that there was no hard drive! As I write
> this I have Disk-Repair running on it to see if there are any bad sectors.
> Any advice would be appreciated.
>
>
> PS My son doesn't remember what distro he was using when this problem
> occurred. He is now in the penalty box until further
> notice......................or until I fix this brand new drive.

I should also mention that the bios now gives an error message stating: hard
Disk sector read function failed

LenBum wrote:
> I'm not sure where to go with this problem. If this group is not
> appropriate I'd appreciate a nudge in the right direction. I have an old
> Alcam Pentium 233 laptop that I bought a new 30GB Fujita hard drive for.
> I installed the drive and left. When I came back my son was messing with
> various Linux distro's I have. He's not sure what he did but now the
> drive isn't recognized by any of the Linux cd's. When booting the bios
> sees the drive but that is it. I pulled out my Windows XP cd and when it
> came to installing it a message came up that there was no hard drive! As
> I write this I have Disk-Repair running on it to see if there are any
> bad sectors. Any advice would be appreciated.
>
>
> PS My son doesn't remember what distro he was using when this problem
> occurred. He is now in the penalty box until further
> notice......................or until I fix this brand new drive.


It sounds like the drive died. Having installed thousands of drives over
the last 20+ years I can tell you that some fail almost immediately. If
the BIOS says there is no drive I would return it and get a new one. I
like Hitachi...

-Philip

On 2008-01-06, LenBum <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> "LenBum" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]. ..
>> I'm not sure where to go with this problem. If this group is not
>> appropriate I'd appreciate a nudge in the right direction. I have an old
>> Alcam Pentium 233 laptop that I bought a new 30GB Fujita hard drive for. I
>> installed the drive and left. When I came back my son was messing with
>> various Linux distro's I have. He's not sure what he did but now the drive
>> isn't recognized by any of the Linux cd's. When booting the bios sees the
>> drive but that is it. I pulled out my Windows XP cd and when it came to
>> installing it a message came up that there was no hard drive! As I write
>> this I have Disk-Repair running on it to see if there are any bad sectors.
>> Any advice would be appreciated.
>>
>>
>> PS My son doesn't remember what distro he was using when this problem
>> occurred. He is now in the penalty box until further
>> notice......................or until I fix this brand new drive.
>
> I should also mention that the bios now gives an error message stating: hard
> Disk sector read function failed
>
There we go, all you need do is to read the message. As another poster said
the HD has fallen over right out of the starting blocks.

The Bios will often see the HD, when it is dead or dying.

Be kind on your son. ;-