UNSOLVED
Primary drive 0 / 1 not found - Help please, urgent
I have a Optiplex GX270 P4 3.0Ghz, 1G ram, Win XP Pro SP1. The hard drive is a 75G with the name IC35L090AVV207-0 in the control panel; I'm not sure of the brand name. This system is 4 months old.
On startup, the following message is displayed: "Primary drive 0 not found. Primary drive 1 not found. Strike F1 to continue, F2 for setup." Pressing F1 will redisplay the message. In setup, "Unknown Device" is displayed in the Drive configuration, and for both the primary drives "Auto" detect is selected. The second drive on the primary IDE channel is a Iomega ZIP. The secondary IDE has a Samsung CDRW / DVD, which is correctly identified in the BIOS setup.
I have unplugged and replugged the IDE cable to both drives but the message remains. Listening very closely, I noticed that the hard drive is making a strange noise upon startup: it sounds like four quick scratches followed by a click. I know the sound is coming from that drive because the sound goes away if I unplug the four prong power cable to that drive and boot up.
If I move the CDRW above the HD in the boot sequence, the error message above is still displayed. However, I am then able to press F1 and boot from the CD. In the Dell Diagnostics (sorry, can't remember the exact name of this program right now), I get the following when I run the Hard Disk tests:
Device Self Test: pass
Read Test: fails, error code 00F0:021A, IDE device failed: device cannot be accessed, possibly medium not present.
Seek Test: fails, error code 00F0:041A, IDE device failed: device cannot be accessed, possibly medium not present.
Confidence Test: fails, error code 00F0:131A, IDE device failed: device cannot be accessed, possibly medium not present.
All of the system board and system management tests pass.
This hard drive has approximately 3 gig's of data for my graduate thesis, and I'm afraid the hard drive has crashed. What should I do to further diagnose and / or fix this problem? TIA
Message Edited by gizzard03 on 12-04-2003 11:32 PM
Rohitbhan, thank you for your reply. There are no additional partitions on the drive, and I do not have another HD. I will find an IDE cable to replace the "dual cable" that I have now. Note that I have tried unplugging the zip drive only, unplugging the HD only, and unplugging both, and have gotten the same message everytime.
Thanks for your suggestion on clearing the NVRAM. I did that and the computer displayed a "Performing IDE configuration" message. It then displayed "Secondary CD-ROM Master" and proceeded to boot from the CD (same as before).
Any other ideas? I will attach the HD as a slave device on the secondary IDE channel to see if I can at least access the data.
- Rohitban and Mike, thanks for your replies. A tech in our department determined that the drive was non-functional, contacted Dell, and replaced it. It was an IDE drive, and I tried swapping IDE cables to no avail. I was able to boot from CD or Zip but I still could not read the HD. I never tried entering IDE diagnostics via CTRL-ALT-D, but I did run IDE diagnostics from the bootable Dell Diagnostics CD (see results above). The drive was making a periodic clicking sound that I could feel by holding the rails of the drive. Thankfully I was able to pull together the majority of the lost data from other computers and the network backup. Thanks so much for your help.
infamous01
5 Posts
1937
0
Posted December 31st, 2003 00:00
I have the same problem, however I know that there is nothing physically wrong with my hard drives. Here's my situation:
I just purchased a Dimension 2400 a few days ago that came with XP Home and a 40GB, 5400 RPM Maxtor HDD. I purchased an 80GB 7200 Western Digtal drive as well and wanted to install it and use it as my primary hard drive for games, etc while using the maxtor for storage.
I put in the WD drive and set the jumper to master while setting the jumper on the maxtor drive to slave. I then formatted the maxtor which had XP home installed on it. When i booted up again I got the "Primary drive 1 not found message" that the previous user also got. I can press F1 and go into the bios where both drives have been correctly picked up. The WD is set as the primary drive and the maxtor is the slave. To make sure both were working, I even took out each drive and put them in another computer which had XP, which saw each without any issues.
I have tried installing XP Home and Pro as well as all the Dell drivers that came with the CD. If I install XP and press F1 after seeing the error message the OS does load without any issues, so my computer is functional, however I would like to get rid of this bootup message as it is quite annoying. If anyone has any suggestions as to what I can try please let me know.
Thanks in advance,
Vik
david_marshall
3 Posts
1937
0
Posted January 3rd, 2004 18:00
I incurred this same problem today on my Dimension 4600 (6 months old). "primary drive 0 not found". This is a brand new hard drive supplied by Dell after my first one failed catastrophically last week. I have checked the IDE cable. The diagnostics checks all passed. I have followed all suggestions above, including the NVRAM reset. My system will no longer boot up. Any ideas?
David
infamous01
5 Posts
430
0
Posted January 3rd, 2004 22:00
David: How big is the drive and what type of motherboard do you have? Have you also tried flashing the Bios? Are you able to boot up at all even though you get that error message?infamous01
5 Posts
1937
0
Posted January 3rd, 2004 22:00
Thanks Mike for your reply. I tried the first part of your suggestion and it did not work. I think there is a problem with my motherboard (Intel845GV) properly detecting drives larger than 40GB. I tried disconnecting the WD which is an 80GB drive and just booted up with the Maxtor which came with the system and is only a 40GB drive. The PC booted up fine without that error message when I did this, but when I tried to boot with the WD, the message came back. I am hoping that flashing the bios will fix the issue, but I can't do that at the moment since I didn't get a floppy with my system and my old floppy drive is broken.
I'll let you know what happens after I flash.
Cheers,
Vik
david_marshall
3 Posts
430
0
Posted January 3rd, 2004 22:00
The HD is 120Mb. The motherboard is Dell, rev A02(?) No I haven't tried flashing the BOIS. I can boot from the CDROM to use the diagnostics but it won't boot from the HD.
Thanks
david_marshall
3 Posts
430
0
Posted January 4th, 2004 13:00
I have managed to cure the problem. It appears to be related to installation of the secondary drive. Removed and all is ok. Thanks for your input.
rohitbhan
2 Posts
1933
0
Posted December 5th, 2003 04:00
Hi
It shows that your Hard Disk is not usable now. Have you made any partitions on the drive, so that you can recover any probable data on that drive. Unplugged all the IDE cables and connect with Hard Disk cable, then restart the computer. If the error remains the same then the Hard Disk is unusable. If you have any aditional HDD,connect it as Primary and connect your 75 GB hard disk as Secondry. Try to recover the Data.
Also try Clearing the NVRAM, by Num,Cap and Scroll Lock glowing.Press ALT +E, then ALT +F and ALT + B. It will restat your computer with a sound. Check the status, if the error remains the same then your HDD is unuasble.