Spouse Decimated IDE Drive on XP2200+ - Down

[mondobyte]

My wife installed a digital camera driver ... NOT GOOD

The net effect was that it seems to have overwritten the firmware in the 40gb IDE HD drive (Primary, of course, wouldn't dare touch the 40gb secondary - too smart for that) and the whole file system and OS is corrupted.

Means that THINK won't run until I make the secondary the primary ... reinstall XP ... etc.

I figure the IDE drive is plain toast - anyone with any suggestions how to restore the firmware?

What a royal pain. At least I am building 3 more XP2200+ for the long haul and the one she corrupted will be back up ... eventually.

[mickwish]

Saw someone reinstall firmware on a HDD and bring it back to life, but it involved actual reinstallation of the chip from a working good drive exactly the same. Not an easy task. :o

Try drive manufacturers support. Will it boot and be recognised by BIOS? Or zip... :o

What brand/model drive?

Oh, and what brand/model/version camera software? Will know what to avoid them... :p

Cheers
Mick

[JSkorna]

Did a google search and came up with this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_qdr=all&q=+%22hard+drive+firmware%22&spell=1

Looks like a trip to your HD web page may help.

I remember updating my CD ROM firmware from Creative by downloading a patch and running an .exe just like some drivers are updated.

[gino x]

That sux Mondo :(
Hope you get it fixed...never had that kind of situation happen to me before =\

[PresterJohn]

this is a very bizarre occurence...i've never heard of a driver install overwriting the firmware on a device. what was the OS on the machine? if it was nt/w2k/xp, it shouldn't even be possible.

[Twinkletoes]

Originally posted by PresterJohn
...this is a very bizarre occurence... Mondo is a very bizarre person, so it figures. :D:

[mondobyte]

The OS is windows XP Pro ...

I ran the WD Diagnostic utility and it reports the firmware is corrupt.

go figure?

[LordKwiKSilva00]

is it still under warranty??? check at wdc.com and see if it is, mebbe you can RMA it(?)

[JSkorna]

Can you do a System Restore to a date before the installation of the driver in question?

[Alchemist]

I haven't heard of any cases with the firmware on a HDD crashing from a drivers install. I've come across the issue on a Lite-On CD-Rom on my mom's PC. After extensice checking and no luck I ended up just having to scrap the drive.

Good Luck...

[PresterJohn]

Originally posted by JSkorna
Can you do a System Restore to a date before the installation of the driver in question?

i'm afraid that isn't going to help him. it is not windows xp that is corrupted...it is the 'bios' on the drive itself. sorta like if you flash the bios on your motherboard and it goes terribly wrong...you're basically left with a 'dead' motherboard unless the board happens to have dual bios chips (like the gigabyte boards).

[Cwizard]

You should be able to reflash the firmware. Check the drive manufacter for the flash utility and the lastest revision.

Unlike a mb flash failure, a peripheral doesn't have to be working to reflash the firmware. I've brought several things back to life that way, e.g. video cards, cd-rws, scsi cards, etc.

Cwizard

[JSkorna]

OK, forgot that firmware is not quite like a driver in this regard.

[Twinkletoes]

Anybody care to explain to what "flashing firmware" means in a few short non-techie words ?

[BBA]

Flashing is simply erasing and reprogramming the device operating code, which for drives is called firmware.

I've never had a firmware fail on a drive, but I would more likely bet the drive is just bad. An OS device driver will not corrupt a device firmware...now, a virus...thats a different story, it would be possible.

I had a virus almost destroy a Maxtor drive on me once, had to disconnect hte drive, boot hte PC to the floppy, start a low level format utility, THEN connect the drives power/ide cable...then flash it. That was the only thing that worked, because if I booted the PC with the drive atcually attached, the virus code would crash the systems bios! (That was back in 1997 on a brand new expensive 3.5 GB drive, and that drive still works today.)

[gino x]

Hmm...I hope TT will understand your explanation BBA :D

I still find it quite odd that a driver can erase a drive's firmware.

Or maybe a hypothetical question that just came to my mind:

What if the driver had some kind of virus that passed the virus scanner?

Altough I'd doubt that'd be the case.

[sharder8]

Ah-h-h-h Mondo . . . . . . . .

Don't ferget to recommend that camera to TT! :p

Harder