[comp.sys.ibm.pc] Disk boot failure

berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu (06/21/88)

What you saw was an indication that the low level format data was
missing.  It will be very difficult to recover anything from the
disk, and impossible if you've already run the low level format
routine again.  I hope you had backups.  This could be an early
indication of a problem with the disk drive or controller, so keep
an eye on it.

			Mike Berger
			Department of Statistics 
			Science, Technology, and Society
			University of Illinois 

			berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu
			{ihnp4 | convex | pur-ee}!uiucuxc!clio!berger

ralf@gtuplab.UUCP (Ralf Medow) (06/23/88)

> Bit of a problem here.  
>
> I have an XT-turbo clone with a Seagate ST225 20 meg hard
> drive and a ST10 v2.4 controller.  The following happened once, then
> went away, now has come to stay:

 [Description of hard disk boot failure deleted]

> Besides, fdisk thinks the drive isn't there.  So it told me
> when I went that far.
>
> Two final things:  sometimes on trying to boot up, I simply get 
> the message, "Boot disk failure.  Type key to retry."	
> And if I boot off the floppy, the computer doesn't recognize
> the hard drive's existence.  

We had a similar problem here recently. A no-name clone with
two hard disks refused to boot from hard disk at power on with a
short message (I don't remember what exactly it was, something
like "Boot disk failure" or "Boot drive not ready" or so). The 
next day it worked again, and another day later if failed again.
When booting off the floppy the computer ignored the existance of
both hard disks: it was impossible to change the current drive
to C: or D: and also impossible to format C:. 

As we didn't have any better idea we pulled out the HD controller
card and plugged it in again. Afterwards and up to now everything
worked fine, and all data were still on the disk. The problem was
obviously a bad contact between HD controller card and motherboard. 

I don't know whether your problem is of the same nature, but at least
you could give it a try.

       Ralf Medow                 {gatech|hp-lsd}!gtuplab!ralf
       Georgia Tech Box 31446     ralf@gtuplab.UUCP
       Atlanta, GA 30332