IBM Deskstar GXP making weird beeps?

[drgrafix]

I have a couple of 41.0 Gig IBM GXP series deskstar drives, one is (was) a master, and the other the slave. I had to rebuild the PC and reinstall W2K Pro on a newer Samsung 40 Gig drive, and converted the former master into a slave... and it seems to be OK. But I also had moved a lot of data onto the _old_ slave and figured I'd suck it off once everything is running properly. Here's where the problem starts.

I reboot with the two slaves swapped, that is... the old slave is my secondary drive, but instead of showing up in the boot screen, nothing is there... just the root drive (new Sammy). Further, the IBM slave is producing two sort of medium toned beeps followed by a higher pitched "chirp" and it keeps repeating over and over. As an experiment, I put the beeping drive inside a USB housing and reconfigured it as a Master (per instructions). Drive still beeps, but I should note that it seems to spin up to speed and then a few seconds later begins beeping. It isn't really a click of death, but I'm wondering about that. I would somehow like to recover/repair that drive because of the data I'd like to get off it. Its not life or death, but there's plenty of stuff that I can't replicate. I had heard that maybe using Partition Magic somehow could help, but how do I use that when the drive is not recognized? The drive was built in June of 2001 and I think IBM had a 5 year warranty but I'm not sure. I have extra drives (including larger ones) so I'm not looking to hussle IBM or whomever is making the drives now... I just want to recover some data.

If anyone can offer some advice with regard to what I can/can't do... I'd really appreciate it. TIA!

Mike

 

[RealBlackStuff]

There is HDD-Regenerator from www.dposoft.net to revive harddisks.
Works off a bootable floppy, so you could put that HD in as Master and disconnect any other HDs.
You can D/L a trialversion first to see if it 'finds' that HD.

PM won't do you any good here.
You could also try IBM's own utilities (disk fitness test) to test the drive.
See the sticky at the top of this forum.

But I think you have another DeathStar!

 

[Nodsu]

The first thing to do with any DeskStar you come across is to check for and install newer firmware.

 

[SNGX1275]

That hard drive is either dead now or is very close to death. I've had a couple fail with that exact same discription of the sounds its making. Occationally though if you let them rest a bit and then plug them in it will work for a while.

HDDRegen can sometimes help in those cases, but I'd suggest if you can get to it get that data off before you run hddregen, because hddregen takes a long time, and I'm not sure your drive has that much life left in it.

Get the data off, then run hddregen, then if it works, continue to use the drive, but never trust anything you put on it to be there when you need it.

 

[drgrafix]

I haven't been able to get to it yet, but as noted in the OP, the drive cannot be seen by the pc, so I can't extract the data. If the HDD tools that were suggested would punch through and find the drive, I could care less how long it takes to extract or whatever. I'll even dedicate another junker PC to the task if thats whats needed. Lets recap:

1. Drive is buzzing twice, then chirping when power is applied.
2. Drive does not show up on the BIOS boot screen or on MY Computer.
3. I cannot access the drive in any way right now.
4. I do want to extract a good deal of the data if I can get access.
5. I'll send the drive back to IBM (whomever) after I get my data off, and hopefully they will send me a replacement.
6. Note this happened out of the blue, no warning, simple disassemble then rebuild seemed to prompt it. Can't go back but it was working fine.
7. How does one apply a firmware patch and where do I get it?

Thanks again for the help guys!

Mike

 

[SNGX1275]

http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-39082

Its too late for the firmware now, your drive it toast man. You could try the infamous 'freezer trick'. Chances of getting that data back yourself are pretty slim though.

Freezer Trick Links:
http://www.google.com/search?q="freezer+Trick"&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8