Question : Problem: Unknown Disk Error

Hi All

I have an AMD FX-51 system, 1GB Ram and a 250GB HDD running Windows XP Pro that until a week ago was running like lightning. Anyway as part of my normal system maintenance I was running disk defrag when the hard drive started clicking and locked up on me. I hard reset the machine from the wall and on reboot I got to the black screen start up when it came up with 'Unknown disk error - boot from disk' I tried to restart a couple of times and each time got the same error. From here I tried the following:

Boot from CD - All drivers loaded from disk, but when it got to the re format phase it stated it could not recognise the HDD. Seriously unhappy at this stage!!!!!!

Check BIOS - I then booted into the bios and again, or as I remember 'Uknown disk' or ' No disk drive found' I believe it was the latter.

My original contention is that, quite simply, the HDD is kaput (no biggee....just replace and restore all data backed up), but what I am more concerned about is the motherboard not recognising hardware (unchartered territory for me here!!). Before I crack open the case and void the warranty (Long story with PC supplier) I wanted to narrow the margins of error.

Any thoughts??

Answer : Problem: Unknown Disk Error

rindi is right,
opening the case will not be the reason that your warranty on the pc will end up,but if you want to be careful then do not go that way.
these ckicking issues would be a reason that your harddrive got bad sectors,which explains why your hardrive wasn't recognised by the BIOS,,,
as rindi ,download a dignostic utility from the maker's site,example:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp
http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/support/hard-drives/software_utilities.html
http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/download/hard-drives/#diagnostic
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/hdd/support/utilities/utilities_index.html

or just the Ultimate boot cd:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

and test the hardrive for bad sectors,but note ,if you want to isolate the bad sectors you must do a low-level-format of your harddrive which will wipe out irretrievably the whole data of the harddrive!!!
make sure the hardrive is set as master on ide cannel 0 ,if you have an p-ata harddrive.
regarding restoring the data you can use this utility,GetDataBack:
www.runtime.org read disclaimer for furthur instructions.
and if you want to read my personal opinion:i never do defragmentation.


cu