Can't boot from Toshiba Hard drive!

[djgillery]

I have a Toshiba 60gb drive MK6022GAX which works fine as an external usb drive when plugged into a T40 (I can even boot from it) but I can't boot from it when it is fitted internally!. The same happens in a R51 and a Compaq desktop (with adapter cable). I can however boot with it in the Compaq when I adjust the Bios hard drive settings to Enhanced DMA and LBA assisted but Thinkpads don't seem to have this option!. I've tried the IBM Hard Drive firmware update disc but it rekons the drives firmware is up to date (HB002A). Anybody out there got any ideas please.

[sjthinkpader]

You want to create the partition and format the drive with it in the Thinkpad HDD slot.

[djgillery]

Tried that. I started a fresh install of Xp, deleted the old partitions, created a new one and formatted (full) the drive, all in situ but it just wouldn't boot!.

[sjthinkpader]

Did you removed the drive select jumper on the drive?

[djgillery]

Yes I did, I've also tried all the different jumper settings without any joy!.

[Harryc]

As an external USB drive, run activekilldisk on it. Install it internally, then try to load XP.
http://www.killdisk.com/

[djgillery]

Thanks Harry, I'll try that.

[djgillery]

Killdisk didn't sort the problem I'm afraid. Still exactly the same, formatted ok loaded install files but wouldn't boot!. The compaq adjustments I made to enable boot were as follows.

1) max UDMA changed to Enhanced DMA
2) Bit Shift changed to LBA Assisted.

I tried the Hitachi Feature Tool on the drive but when I accepted the License agreement I got the following error message.

unhandled exception at 03D7 : 0590 error code : 0000

This error occured on both the Compaq and the T40 so I tried another hard drive and the program worked fine, so software doesn't appear to be an issue. Any more ideas please?

[RealBlackStuff]

I never liked Toshiba HDs. I have replaced a number of them in different brand laptops, and all because they crap out early in life.
To confirm this: http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/to ... D2184+60GB
I think you should send it to the "eternal hunting fields".

[sojourner]

The problem you are facing is common to anyone installing a non-IBM HDD into a T-series IBM laptop. The problem is missing and sometimes errant data in the MBR (master boot record). The Phoenix BIOS is setup to look for data in the MBR specific to that IBM laptop. When it doesn't see it the BIOS will typically throw an error message such as "Operating system not found" (even if the OS is there)!

To resolve this, download:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62978
-or-
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 54483.html (one I use)

Being your HDD currently boots properly in a USB enclosure but was not setup to run in a TP, run MBR fixer choosing to replace the current MBR (option 2). Next choose option B. That ought to do it!

EDIT: be sure the HDD is in IDE0 slot (your main HDD slot in the lappy) when you fix the MBR

[djgillery]

Still no luck!. Running the maser boot repair cd program hangs up when I answer 'Y' on the T40. When I run it in the Compaq is runs fine saying SafeGuard not found no changes are neccessary. When I boot from the Rescue and Recovery floppy in the Compaq the following message comes up.

error 0x0101
partition 0 empty
it cannot be made bootable

but then on the next screen it says

The operation was completed seccessfully.

However putting the drive back in the T40 made no difference it still wouldn't boot. I haven't got a floppy drive for the T40 so couldn't try it directly but I don't suppose it would have made any difference. Maybe I could boot from a Usb stick and put the Rescue and Recovery files on that!. Anyone got any more ideas?

[RealBlackStuff]

Get a decent HD from Fujitsu, WD, Seagate, Samsung, anything but Toshiba!

[sojourner]

djgillery, going to need more information to be able to help. It will have to be specific and DETAILED! Also, any work you do with the HDD should be done in the T40 HDD bay and NOT the Compaq. The reason is, the TP BIOS 'sees' your HDD and 'maps' it (to be able to read from and write to) in a certain manner. If the HDD is formatted, partitioned etc in another device (i.e. in the Compaq, USB enclosure etc.) the T40 BIOS will NOT recognize the HDD and will NOT boot. In other words, don't think you can partition, format, install your OS etc on the Compaq or USB enclosure and simply insert the drive into the TP and have it boot. It will not boot! sjthinkpader gave good advice when he said at the outset to format and partition in the TP drive bay!! The MBR repair tool MUST also be used with the HDD in the TP bay!! And finally, be sure the T40 BIOS settings are ALL set to DEFAULTS (upon boot hit F1, then F9 then F10).

Considering all you've tried I'd say we have to get back to basics (as mentioned above) and start from scratch to resolve this HDD issue.

I would start with a BLANK HDD. The following will accomplish this for you quickly:
copy the below syntax and paste into a file called ERASEHDD.BAT

CTTY NUL
A 100
INT 13

RAX
0301
RBX
0200
F 200 L 200 0
RCX
0001
RDX
0080
P
Q

Use the above script as follows from a bootable floppy disk or CD (make sure ERASEHDD.BAT and DEBUG.EXE are on the floppy or CD). It will IMMEDIATELY wipe all partition information off any drive seen as HDD0 on whatever PC it is used, so proceed with caution !!

DEBUG <ERASEHDD.BAT

Now all partition information is removed. The MBR may still have information in it however thus you need to use the MBR tool as directed in my previous post. And whilst on the MBR, I am curious, do you know the history of this HDD? Has anyone ever used Software on it to alter how the drive is seen. Some HDD manufacturers provided software to do 'tricks' with the drive (so its full capacity can be seen by old BIOS's for example). Has any 'trick' type software been used on the drive thus leaving errant data in the boot sector? Reason this is asked, because this drive CAN boot from a USB enclosure it shows the drive is good. Because it DOESN'T boot from within the TP shows me either the drive was partitioned and formatted with a drive geometry the TP does like nor will accept, OR, the boot sector is a mess. BTW, do you KNOW a 'good' HDD boots fine in this T40? We're assuming it does and we don't have an issue with the T40. Would you please verify the T40 boots a good HDD?

You said above you did a fresh install of XP, partitioning, formatting and OS install. Was this done with the HDD in the T40 HDD bay? If so, did you use the HDD caddy when you inserted the drive. If you are trying to shortcut and not use the caddy it (the HDD) will most likely NOT insert properly into the TP IDE connector, thus problems! I remember years ago struggling with HDD issues and a T41 and come to fine out, because I didn't use a caddy when the HDD was inserted, although it FELT like everything connected correctly inside, it did not . Using a caddy corrected the issue!

Once the drive is erased, insert it into the TP (with default BIOS settings) and proceed to partition, format and install OS (in that order). If you did not use recovery CD's to install the OS you'll need to use the MBR tool (use the one I use, it's for older PC's as ours). The drive should boot ... if it does not

Well, this is a long post. Hope it's helpful. It seems HDD issues can be one of the biggest issues to fix and many of us have been there; so don't feel alone in the hours and hours you've spent trying to get things to work

[djgillery]

Many thanks sojourner I'll try that out.

The HDD was used bought on E-Bay

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWNX:IT

I am using a 60gb Fugitsu drive in the T40 at the moment but want to prepare the Toshiba drive for another T40 that I am building up. No I am not using a caddy but the same boot prob occurs with the drive in a R51,T20 and Compaq so I doubt that I have a connection problem!. I origionally coped the entire Fugitsu drive contents to the Toshiba drive and this enabled me to access the recovery console on the Tosh drive thus confirming that the drive was accessable. I tried FIXMBR and FIXBOOT but these didn't help!. I'll use the caddyy from the R51 just to be 100% sure and eliminate the possibility of a problem. I don't know the history of the drive I'm afraid, maybe I need to get in touch with the seller although I can't think how it will help at the moment!. Thanks again and I'll keep you posted on how I get along.

[RealBlackStuff]

I Have here a toshiba ide hard drive,i bought it for my laptop but was not compatible,i tested it on my pc using an ide conector cable and works fine,make sure this is compatible with your laptop before bidding as i do not except returns

And you still bought it! We have freedom of speech, so fill in here what you like!

[djgillery]

Yer I know, there's one born every day. The word 'mug' springs to mind. Still it's a learning curve and I'm picking the brains of some of the best. The ideas and info posted will certainly be useful in the future for me and others I hope. At the end of the day even if I can't boot from the drive, it will still be useful in a USB enclosure, I could even put it in the Compaq desktop where it will boot! so all is not lost.

[sojourner]

djgillery, one other thought came to mind ... be sure the primary partition you create on the Toshiba is marked ACTIVE (only way it will boot as IDE0)! This can be checked with DOS FDISK.EXE or in Disk Manager (under Administrative Tools, Computer Management) in XP (or any NT OS).

Let us know how you make out ...

[djgillery]

Still no joy!. Tried to be clever and booted from flash drive with debug and errasehdd on it and erased the flash drive as soon as I ran DEBUG <ERASEHDD.BAT. Silly me I should have realized that the flash drive was seen as C:\!. At least I know that the batch file does wipe the partition info!. Next step, I borrowed a USB floppy and repeated the above and the following appears on the screen:

^ Error
-A 100
18A3 :0100 INT 13
18A3 :0102
-RAX
AX 0000
:0301
-RBX
BX 0000
:0200
-F 200 L 200 0
-RCX
CX 0000
:0001
-RDX
DX 0000
:0080
-P

AX=0101 BX=0200 CX=0001 DX=0080 SP=FFEE BP=0000 SI=0000 DI=0000
DS=18A3 ES=18A3 SS=18A3 IP=0102 NV UP NG NZ AC PO CY
18A3 :0102 0000 ADD [BX+SI],AL DS :0200=00
-Q

Don't know what any of the above means but the first line seemed to be a bit of a worry!.
(Error).
I boot the t40 from the Xp disk and could access the recovery console which meant that partition info and files were still there so ERASEHDD.BAT hadn't worked!. I booted from a Windows 98 boot disk and ran Fdisk, but it came up with 'No Fixed drives Present'. The partition is set up as active since I checked this when testing the drive in a USB enclosure.
Any more ideas?.

P.S I used the caddy this time, but no difference.

[RealBlackStuff]

Any more ideas?

Buy another HD.

[djgillery]

Yep, time to stop flogging a dead horse and accept that I have a faulty drive!.
I ran SmartUDM -HDD S.M.A.R.T viewer 2.0 on the drive and 8 items had a '*' against them!.
A '*' means life critical attribute, so time to bring this topic to a close I think! and put the episode down to experience. Thanks to all who have contributed, I've picked up quite a bit along the way I hope that others have too. thanks again.

[sojourner]

Any more ideas?

Buy another HD.

LOL! Well it may seem buying another HDD is in order but I'm as stubborn as can be with some things and I won't throw away a HDD very easily. Here's a couple more thoughts:

First, the error message was OK; it happened because CTTY NUL was called and CTTY was not on the floppy. (it's still OK, does not affect the erase function)

Second, don't understand your ending comment regarding recovery console. When you started the XP CD and invoked recovery console, did it scan the HDD and find C:\WINDOWS? If so, your partition/drive/files should show up when the drive is accessed via USB, also ERASEHDD.BAT -WILL- WORK. What shows up on the drive when accessed via USB?

Lastly, I recently had an incident very similar to yours with a drive I KNEW was good. Couldn't boot from it, FDISK didn't see it (no fixed disks present), XP and W2K Drive Manager saw NOTHING!! Yet GPARTED on a Live Linux CD (ubuntu) showed the drive, its partitions, everything. That's when I knew something was terribly wrong with the boot sector or MBR. Deleted everything I could with GPARTED, used ERASEHDD.BAT and voila, FDISK now saw the HDD. Partitioned etc but wait, over 3GB was missing from the free space. What the heck! Then it came to mind, the RECOVERY PARTITION which at one point was installed on this drive was just over 3GB. That had to be it. There had to still be errant information regarding the recovery partition on this HDD so here's what I did.

Installed the HDD into the TP, booted into BIOS settings and changed SECURITY, IBM Predesktop Area, Access IBM Predesktop Area to NORMAL. Accept, reboot. Same thing again but this time set BIOS Predesktoparea to DISABLED. Reboot. Ran MBR Repair Tool as described in an earlier post, ran ERASEHDD.BAT, FDISK and still no joy. The 3GB was not there!! Then I desided to install a recovery partition to the drive. Did that, deleted it and voila the 3GB free space became available. The drive is now partitioned and formatted to full capacity, boots find; ran disk checking tools and surface scan and everything is perfect!

What I learned from this was just how corrupt things can become in the bootsector and MBR especially when recovery partitions are involved, and how persistant one must be to fix them. You may actually have a 'good' HDD but persistant corrupt information is stored preventing it from booting, as was the case with mine. Then too the Boot Sector may physically be damaged preventing BOOT. Have you done a thorough surface scan and seen if any bad sectors appear at the beginning of the disk (this can be accomplished with the HDD in a USB enclosure)?

Stick with it, I can see this has been a great learning experience for you; furthermore, as you said, even if it ultimately cannot be used as a BOOT drive it still works as an auxzillary drive , count your blessings and think of all you are learning!

[djgillery]

I thought that erasehdd.bat would have done just that, thats why I was surprised to see C:\WINDOWS which allowed me access to the recovery console!. I'll scan the drive in the USB and report back when I get chance. Many thanks sojourner for your persistance!.

[djgillery]

Just scanned the drive in the USB, no problems!. Defraged no prob and checked again under disk management it says drive healthy active. Is there a Windows prog to show S.M.A.R.T drive properties out there that'l work on a Toshiba drive?. Cheers.

[Harryc]

Try the Hitachi drive fitness test.

[djgillery]

Moved along a bit further I think!. Ran PC Doctor which showed drive as primary slave with bootable partition!. No jumpers on drive so tried jumper on cable select pins. Pin 28 grounded so this should have also set the drive up as master but it didn't. Even so I would still have expected the T40 to boot from a primary slave drive since I put HDD1 at the top of the boot list in the bios!. Could this be the problem?. I know from past experience that cdrom drives without jumpers are set up with firmware to be either master or slave. Do I need to update the firmware?, the ibm thinkpad hard drive update utility says not. The firmware in the hdd is HB002A and I have downloaded version HB002G bin file but what utility can I use to update the firmware.

[RealBlackStuff]

Check the 4 pins (ABCD) next to the IDE connector, they are the jumpers.
BD 2468etc. (upper row, as seen from the label-side, pins pointing away from you)
AC 1357etc. (lower row,.....)

ABCD block empty: master
AB or CD jumpered: slave
BD jumpered: cable select

Firmware update: try this: http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/ ... le-CD-ISO/

[djgillery]

As explained above, no jumpers fitted therefore should be master but pc doctor says slave. Also tried cable select as already mentioned!. Could it be hardware fault?, would like to try new firmware, got the bin file but don't now how to upload it into HDD

[sojourner]

As explained above, no jumpers fitted therefore should be master but pc doctor says slave. Also tried cable select as already mentioned!. Could it be hardware fault?, would like to try new firmware, got the bin file but don't now how to upload it into HDD

Very interesting. Well, a couple of thoughts:
I've accidentally inserted a bootable HDD into a PC jumped as slave and it did not boot. Distinctly remember it. Don't know why it wouldn't boot not seeing a master so perhaps BIOS logic MUST see a bootable MASTER to boot ... don't know.

The other thing is that PC Doctor saw the drive as a slave. You'll have to tell us your setup to know if this is really significant. For example, did you BOOT from a USB device then run PC Doctor somehow whilst everything was in the T40 ... see what I mean? What was your setup (including laptop/desktop whatever) specifically.

Lastly, did you try GOOGLE to see if anything popped up on this issue. It seems facinating the drive is seen as a slave when it's not jumpered. Did you have a very close (magnified) look at the circuit board around the jumper pins realblackstuff mentioned? If you can see circuit board traces from them you may want to follow as far as possible looking for shorted traces (making it seem as if the SLAVE pins were jumpered). It's a long shot, perhaps as much as updating firmware, but then you are so far into this what the heck.

Keep us updated!

[djgillery]

The setup was as follows. Faulty drive in T40 hard drive slot and booted pc doctor from dvd drive. Showed drive as primary slave, repeated this with a good 40gb tosh drive, this showed as primary master. Checked jumpers on faulty drive (none fitted) re-inserted into laptop and again showed up as primary slave. Removed pcb from drive and checked for faults (none found) then tried cable select jumper and still came up as primary slave. Have been googling most of the day trying to find out about firmware issues etc only came up with a bin file which I've no idea what to do with!. Maybe I'm on the wrong track here, what I'll do next I think is set up good drive as a slave and see if I can boot from it. I'll keep you informed.

[djgillery]

Just tried the good drive set up as a primary slave and guess what? it woudn't boot. Just to double check that it was seen as slave I ran pc doctor again and there it was detected as a primary slave drive. I checked in the BIOS to make sure HDD1 was on the list and it was, so the conclusion I've come to is that you can only boot from a primary master in a T40!. Still hasn't sorted the problem but still moving forward I think!!.