Hard Drive FAT Table Bad?

[MHSCodeMaster]

When I took it out of storage, and first turned it on, it ran the POST tests secessfully. Then, after it checked the floppy drive for a bootable disk (and of course nothing was there), the hard drive started to spin. Right then it gives me a "Disk I/O Error." I have tried to reinstall at least DOS 6.0, but DOS says that the hard drive FAT table is bad. When it tries to correct it, I get a "Disk Unusable" message. So, I have since created a DOS floppy disk. It's not that useful, but it's DOS. I have tried downloading a Hard Drive repair tool from the Compaq support site, but it doesn't help.

I've tried the DOS 'FORMAT' and 'FDISK' commands, but they can't help either. Please help me. Is this HD ruined??

 

[Paul Nagel]

Open the case and make sure that the ribbon cable is attached securely at both the motherboard and hard drive. If still nothing, a switch option in fdisk is "FDISK /MBR" which clears the Master Boot Record. If you already have nothing to loose, try it.

 

[MHSCodeMaster]

I tried the 'FDISK /MBR' command, it it appeared to work. Then I rebooted. I got a "Invalid Partition Table" error. I thought that that was no problem, because I just used FDISK on it. Then I inserted the MS-DOS 6.22 setup disk, and rebooted. MS-DOS said that it needed to "Configure" my hard drive for use with DOS, so I said "Yes, Reconfigure". After it did that, it said to keep my disk in the drive, and then reboot. I did so, and then the setup program auto-initialized on the reboot (like it was supposed to). It gave me an error saying that "An error occured while reading or writing to drive C." It kept having the same problem, so I chose "Skip this step". It went on to tell me that it need to format my hard drive, but when I chose continue, it had the same error. When I rebooted without any disk, it said that "Track 0 was bad -- Disk unusable." Any other suggestions?

 

[Paul Nagel]

Determine what manufacture made the hard drive, go to there web site and download the utility to test the drive. If it is ok, they should also have a utility to wipe the disk clean so you can start over again. To me, it sounds like the disk is bad, but you may as well test it.

 

[MHSCodeMaster]

I'm sure that the manufacturer is Compaq. (The drive is easily removable, and it has a sticker that says "Replace with Compaq spare part #..." Anyway, I've tried the solutions on their web site, but they didn't work on the drive. They don't have extensive support on products as old as this laptop. I think it'll need a new hard drive... (Although, I could buy a used laptop for about $150.) Thanks. If anyone has any further suggestions, let me know.....

 

[~Candy~]

Compaq doesn't make their own hard drives...take a closer look at the top for something like Quantum, Seagate, Mitsui, etc.