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WD-12 HD issues?

framer

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2008
Messages
582
Location
Murrell's Inlet SC
I pulled out a HD to checkout. It's been sitting for a couple of years and had previously check out OK. This time I LL formatted it with a 8bit win-gen controller card in a PC unit. Everything seems fine rebooted to the C:, no problem.

Shut off the unit and rebooted no operating system found. I booted from a: and everything seemed fine with the c:drive I copied over the command.com file and soft booted and it booted to C: fine. Shut it down and rebooted and no operating system found.

I've also tried a soft boot after the no operating system found thinking spin up issues but no joy.

PC
wd-12 10M
msdos 3.3

scratching my head?

yes, I tried a different set of cables same results.


framer
 
Well the MBR statement did make me think about it. I put in a MSDOS 6.22 disk dropped the partition started over with a new one created by 6.22. I then issued an fdisk /MBR just because, formatted and installed the system and everything is working. I then put in the MSDOS 3.3 disk and again deleted the partition started a new one and formatted the drive with 3.3. Works perfect.

Previously I had LL formatted the drive twice and fdisk and formatted under 3.3 four times with the same results. Something in 6.22 was able to fix the problem.

framer
 
Interesting... I mentioned it because I recently encountered similar behavior on a fresh LL formatted drive, fresh SYS from floppy and it wouldn't boot. I first checked it with an older version of Norton AV and didn't find anything, but I tried VET and it ultimately detected a variant of the Stoned virus. Cleaned that up (and/or MBR repair) and it works fine now. MBR viruses can cause wacky behaviors like that. I think I had picked up the virus from a recent 386 machine rescue that I was able to revive the hard drive... It was the source of the MBR virus on my boot floppy, so I guess the lesson is to be careful out there with old machines that might contain old viruses ;)

Glad you found the right combo of things to get the drive working. I've found the WD12 drives to be very reliable... all of the ones I've found are in working condition. Seagate drives seem to be pretty good too about 80% chance to be working and the old Miniscribe drives almost never haha.
 
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