Third Master Hard Disk Error

[mlh]

When I boot up, instead of the windows xp logo and bar, I get a black screen which states the congifuration of system, it detects the keyboard, mouse, usb, both cdrom drive, but states the following with reference to the drive:

Third Master Hard Disk Erro
Press <F4>to Run Setup

When I press F4, I hear to beeps from the tower, a black screen with the words "enter CURRENT password:

Which I don't know what it is. I have pressed f10 to get the bios, and have noticed that my harddrive is no longer listed under boot/boot device priority. When I press enter or esc I get a black screen stating

Reboot and Select proper boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device.

I have a hybrid PC that is about 8 years old, and do not have any type of back up or bootable floopy. I don't have alot of information on the hard drive, so nothing major will be destroyed...however, I would like to get the computer functioning again if possible
Does anyone have any suggestions? In lamens terms please

 

[raybay]

Most likely, your hard drive has gone bad.
For a PC that is 8 years old, it should have failed a long time ago.
Consider buying a replacement, but remember you will need an install CD.

 

[mlh]

Thanks for your help. I figured as much. Are you suggesting I purchase another hard drive, or another PC? If you are referring to a hard drive, how do I figure out what is compatible with my motherboard, other internal hardware. My hard drive is/was an 80GB Maxtor 7200RPM DiamondMax-9 ATA133 3.5" IDE. I would like something along the same lines...it worked fine for my needs. Thanks again for the help.

 

[raybay]

I like the Seagate drives... because they have a five year warranty. Seagate bought out Maxtor when they started to have so many troubles that no computer manufactuer would use them. Hitachi is terrible, and is about to close down their hard drive division. That leaves you with Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba, and Fujitsu... and Seagate has the longest warranty.

 

[DeepMartin]

u can always try to slave it on another computer and run diskcheck it

(but no disk clean up since it will try to delete everything in the "unnecessary files" option)

i also have old computers laying around so all the HHDs are that old or older from 3 to 10 gbs big...

if it wont work on the other computer then the hhd is failed for sure
so far i got 8 out of 15 hhds i had that are still working so good luck

PS are ur jumpers set ok? wht is the 4th slave device?

 

[mlh]

When you suggest "slave it on another computer", do you mean to install it as a back up? How would I do that? Is it possible slave it to a laptop? Not sure what jumper cables are...I am not up to date with the tech terminology...sorry.

 

[SNGX1275]

He means put it in another desktop as slave drive (not the boot drive). You 'could' do it on a laptop, but not internally, you'd need an external USB enclosure for it. That may be an option you need to pursue if you don't have another desktop and you have important data on the drive, enclosures run from $20 and up.

Keep in mind though, if the drive has failed, slapping it in an external enclosure isn't going to magically make it work again.

I assume you've done the simple things like checking to make sure the power and data cables are seated properly at their connection points. May even be worth trying a new IDE cable, but unless you've been moving the system a lot or messing with the drives the chances of it being a bad cable are pretty slim.