SCSI Hard Drive Problem

[Waldo]

One of my SCSI IBM "Deathstars" has gone on vacation. BIOS sees it and XP sees it but says "unrecognizable format" in Device Manager. Ghost & Partition Magic Rescue don't even see the drive. I used a DOS MBR recovery disk and it sees all 3 partitions on the drive but that is the only utility I have found that sees them. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[dick471]

I run 9 scsi drives and have never seen this. Have you tried running Windows checkdisk from a command prompt? Also you might try during scsi bios select "Ctrl+A" and run the disk utilities that come with your scsi host card. Is this an 80Pin drive with an adapter, or a normal 68Pin? Make sure that the ID jumper didn't fall off.

 

[Waldo]

Thanks, Dick, I'll try the SCSI utilities. I can't run scandisk because, although Device Manager shows the drive, the drive letters are gone in Explorer. It is a 68 oin drive and the jumper is there.

 

[dick471]

I didn't realize the drive letter was gone. You might try Disk Management and see if the drive is shown. It might be there as "Healthy" and a correct format, but lost the drive letter. I have had this happen many times if I've added a temp USB device. Try right clicking the drive in Disk Management and see if you can just add a drive letter without it wanting to format the drive. Also IBM's web site have a utility program that will check the drive in DOS. Next option is to put into another machine with scsi and see if the drive is OK.

 

[dick471]

Another option if you can't put the drive in another scsi machine. Go to this site and download PE-Builder. This will generate a bootable operating system independent of your system and can access all Fat or NTFS partitions.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/index.php?p=1