Problems and Troubleshooting on hard disk

• Giving POST Errors (e.g. Primary Master HDD failed)

– Check the physical connection of HDD and whether it is connected to Primary IDE

– Check for the proper position of Master Jumper. Refer to the label on the HDD for

this.

– Check for loose contact of interface cable and Power cable

– Try changing the Interface cable

– Check the disk in another IDE port

– Check for proper voltages at the 4 pin power connector

– Check whether the IDE controllers are enabled. If disabled enable the same.

– Check for the BIOS Settings to be correct – try selecting the “Auto detect” option first.

If still not detected, try detecting the HDD manually by entering Cylinder, Head, and

Sector information.

– Try using the drive capacity limit jumper if you are connecting a new Hard Disk in a

system with old BIOS.

• Data Access Time is more – Disk is running very slow

– Try defragmenting the Disk with Defrag command in DOS and defragment Utility in

Windows

– Check for the presence of virus with an updated Antivirus Software

• Disk is giving abnormal sound

– The Disk might have got physically damaged. The Disk has to be replaced

• Bad Sectors are more

– Run Scandisk / chkdsk to mark the bad sectors in the Hard Disk

– If it looks to be growing continuously, replace the Hard Disk

• HDD not getting detected to full capacity

– If the BIOS version is old, try upgrading to a new version

– Enable LBA method of addressing instead of CHS method

– Try using the latest version of FDISK program if the problem is within the Windows

Operating System