Technical Tips Trouble-shooting Hard Drive Problems

Technical Tips Trouble-shooting Hard Drive Problems: "Trouble-shooting Hard Drive Problems -
Part 1
The following article is the first in a series that helps solve many of the common boot problems with hard drives. The article explains how to verify the drive functionality, determine the correct setup for the drive, and repair problems with the Master Boot Sector once the drive is verified to be functional. This information will help solve some very common problems encountered in a computer service department. This article is designed to work with a system that has a single drive with one bootable partition using a FAT 16 structure (all DOS and older Windows systems), and no drive overlay.
It is extremely important not to make or write any changes to data on the hard drive without first verifying the hard drive configuration. Therefore, the first priority when unable to access information on a hard drive is to verify all of the configuration information dealing with the suspect hard drive.
Partition ParameterValue or Equation
Partition StatusBootable
Starting Head1
Starting Sector1
Starting Cylinder0
Partition TypeBigdos (drives greater than 30 MB), otherwise DOS 12
Ending HeadTotal Number of Heads -1
Ending SectorSectors per Track displayed in Volume Boot Sector
Ending CylinderNumber of Cylinders set in CMOS - 2
Total # of SectorsNumber of Sectors displayed in Volume Boot Sector
Start Absolute SectorNumber of Sectors per Track in Volume Boot Sector
Boot Signature55AA

Step One: Make sure that Micro-Scope detects the hard drive
In Micro-Scope, System Configuration, Compare Settings - check to make sure that there is not an asterisk beside the number of hard drives detected value. If there is an asterisk, either the CMOS is set incorrectly, or there is an ele"