Is my hard disk useless now?

Hi people,

I am having some problems with my IDE hard disk: it has crashed and I was wondering whether there is a way (physical or software) of repairing it.

I still use Windows XP. Actually the hard disk which has crashed is not my main hard disk. I connect it externally to my PC using an external IDE to USB converter and I backup my data on it.

Yesterday, when I connected the hard disk externally to my PC, my PC did not detect it. I initially thought there was a hardware problem with the external IDE to USB converter and not my IDE hard disk but when I connected a friend's hard disk to the external IDE to USB converter and my PC did detect it, I realized that the problem was with my IDE hard disk. I removed it and connected it to my motherboard as "Secondary Master" while my main hard disk was the "Primary Master" and the BIOS did detect the faulty hard disk on startup. However, when windows started, the situation was the same: my PC did not detect it.

I switched off my PC, I removed my main hard disk as "Primary Master" and connected the faulty hard disk to the "Primary Master" and used my optical drive as "Secondary Master" because I wanted to try to install Windows XP on the faulty hard disk to see what happens. I then inserted my installation CD in the optical drive and restarted my PC but when I pressed enter to install Windows XP on the faulty hard disk, I received a blue screen of death giving the following message:

===================================================================================================================
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.

Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disbale BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8

to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0xF84C9CAD, 0xF80907E4, 0x00000000)

*** setupdd.sys - Address F84C9CAD base at F8490000, DateStamp 48025277
===================================================================================================================

Could somebody please tell me whether there is a way to repair my hard disk. I do not care about the data on the hard disk because it was useless anyway. I only want to carry on using the hard disk.

Thanks for reading and replying
 
Like JMMD said, download diagnostic utility for it, I would suggest to download the one for the drive that you are using, as it will be able to properly detect any problems and give the chance of properly repairing it, others might see a problem but won't fix it.

If you get the proper one there is a better chance it can fix any problems. Though I must say even if the hard drive is successfully repaired I would look into buying a backup drive and keeping an image of it incase it fully fails...
 
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