Anyone know anything about SATA drives?

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Anyone know anything about SATA drives?
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Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:15 pm Post subject: Anyone know anything about SATA drives?

My Dell PC that's less than a month old has refused to boot.

I've run SATA diagnostics and I have a return code 7. I cannot seem to find out what this means. I've looked on Seagate's site and cannot find the details.

I've checked the power cords and cables and everything seems fine.

(Dell tech support don't answer the phone after 10 mins and I've emailed them but they can take days to reply.

)

Thanks for any help.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28237
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:21 pm Post subject:
I'm a bit of a dinosoar on drives, only have EIDE. jema

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:24 pm Post subject:
Have you tried a look at www.overclockers.co.uk ? There's loads of stuff on their fora.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28237
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:31 pm Post subject:

sean wrote:

Have you tried a look at www.overclockers.co.uk ? There's loads of stuff on their fora.

Spyes forums, memories of flame wars past....

jema

N.V.M.

Joined: 05 Feb 2005
Posts: 207
Location: British Columbia,Canada,eh!

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:32 pm Post subject:
do you see your drive during post up? can you boot into safe mode? can you try the drive in another machine to see if it will boot(to eliminate the possibilty that the drive is toast?) physical inspection of cables is often not good enough, try different ones.

N.V.M.

Joined: 05 Feb 2005
Posts: 207
Location: British Columbia,Canada,eh!

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:35 pm Post subject:
and have you done anything since it won't boot up?..ie-new hardware,new software(including updates)

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:35 pm Post subject:

jema wrote:

sean wrote:

Have you tried a look at www.overclockers.co.uk ? There's loads of stuff on their fora.

Spyes forums, memories of flame wars past....

jema

I didn't think it seemed like somewhere I'd want to live.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28237
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:41 pm Post subject:

sean wrote:

jema wrote:

sean wrote:

Have you tried a look at www.overclockers.co.uk ? There's loads of stuff on their fora.

Spyes forums, memories of flame wars past....

jema

I didn't think it seemed like somewhere I'd want to live.

Bleeding busy they are, but no new registrations and my account seems to have been zapped

I was what you might call a "respected" vistor there some time ago.

jema

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:47 pm Post subject:

This morning OK. PC shut down fine and turned on. Presented with a c0000218 Registry Failure Message and after a bit of digging thought I'd check the disk.

All the connections should be fine as the PC is only a few days old, if I could only find out what RC 7 was I may know where to look but I cannot find any details on SATA diagnostics.

I may be tempted to buy a small SATA drive and cables to try and if there's a problem with the current drive I may reject the whole PC as it's the second problem and I've had no real Tech support from Dell so far.

That's not normally a problem but there's just no useful details with the system.

I'll try emailing Seagate as drive makers have been good in the past.

Thanks for the help, I've looked at sevral foru and no good answers so far.

N.V.M.

Joined: 05 Feb 2005
Posts: 207
Location: British Columbia,Canada,eh!

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:51 pm Post subject:

"STOP: c0000218 {Registry File Failure}" Error Message When You Install Windows XP
Article ID : 830084
Last Review : August 24, 2004
Revision : 1.0
On this page
SYMPTOMS
CAUSE
RESOLUTION
REFERENCES

SYMPTOMS
When you try to install Microsoft Windows XP on a new hard disk that is formatted with NTFS, you may receive the following error:
Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate
This error occurs after Windows XP copies the installation files to the hard disk and the computer restarts.
CAUSE
This problem may occur if either of the following conditions is true: � The hardware where you are trying to install Windows XP may not be compatible with Windows XP.
� The hard disk where you are trying to install Windows XP may be damaged.

N.V.M.

Joined: 05 Feb 2005
Posts: 207
Location: British Columbia,Canada,eh!

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 8:58 pm Post subject:
if all else fails, set your comp to boot from the cd-rom, (have your winxp disk in the drive), let Windows begin to install and when it get to the screen where it asks you to REPAIR,go into there and run "chkdsk /r"(without the quotes)

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 9:03 pm Post subject:
I've tried that and after a bit of CD activity I get the c0000218 error. Can you boot from a CD with no Disk Drive?

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 10:05 pm Post subject:
I've found some more diagnostic tools you can boot to in a hidden partion and the disk check found a couple of errors. Error Code 0F00:0244 Message Block 6728785 Uncorrectable data Error or media is write protected. It found a couple of these but the test didn't complete. I then rebooted and the PC came back to life. Very strange. Thanks for the help.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 10:09 pm Post subject:

Have a look at the Hard Drive's label. The sticker on the top. There you will find the model number - for seagate this probably starts ST.
Google that and you may find a tech manual online, which should give you the error codes...

But- I doubt that its actually going to tell you more than the drive ain't working.
It is often a mistake to take any error message too literally - a read or write failure could be due to a failure in the drive, the connectors or the logic board - its hard for a program to tell the difference!
If it boots partially from the disk before getting a Windows error message, then communication with the disk is not solidly broken- something is being loaded from the disk.
It could be some bad blocks, or a failure pertaining to an entire platter surface...
I hope there's nothing important on that disk.

General point: Total Cost of Ownership only depends partially on the sticker price!

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 05 10:23 pm Post subject:
I did get hold of the manual but nothing useful. I think the RC 7 is a general code. The disk is back to life but the PC has crashed again. PC has a McAffee virus package that's up-to-date but I don't know what's happening) The disk seems to be hunting for something but never finding it. I've emailed Dell and will wait for an answer, then I'll email Seagate. Data has been backed up.

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