Firstly I'd check the bios just to make sure the drive is recognised. If there is a message there like "not recognised" "wrong parameters" "no match" "can not detect" "not on list" etc. then your drive is 99% of the time physically duff. YOU may in rare cases be able to get data off, or send it off for recovery.
The big question dos or ntfs?
Dos is easy! Download a dos boot disk - do a search on Google - one old site was? bovis?? Remove all hd drives and install the new drive as master and format it. Once this is done install the old drive as a master on the second channel (in place of the cd) or make it a slave - your choice, but the first one is better. Please note that on some rare cases that the drive can drag down both channels. You can now copy or xcopy from one drive to another.
Ntfs: either you have to obtain a special NTFS reader prog (
http://www.winternals.com/products/r...02.asp?pid=erd) or "hiren's boot cd 6" (
http://www.morgud.com/reviews/softwa...-Rescue-CD.asp). You must not use emule etc. to download these, as that would be piracy, and being good IT people we do not condone that.
Once you have a boot disk or cd to boot from, do the above dos steps again.. think hiren might be a windows environment though.
Check warranty of your drive. Also most manufacturers have FREE drive diags for their drive.
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http://www.jsifaq.com/subA/tip0000/rh0012.htm - have a read too!!
"This Windows startup disk can access a drive that has the Windows NT file system (NTFS) or File allocation table (FAT) file system installed. Theprocedures in this article can be useful to work around the following startup problems:
• Corrupted startup sector.
• Corrupted master startup record (MBR).
• Virus infections.
• Missing or corrupted NTLDR or Ntdetect.com.
• Incorrect Ntstartupdd.sys driver. ...................."
PS. Tip of the year - use some form of drive cooling!! Cheap fan ones work.
PPS. You have not recently installed an external usb2 card and now these faults are occurring? Or any other hardware?
PPPS.
http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/index.html - a bit over priced and annoying, but works
PPPPS.
www.grc.com for spinrite