IBM T41 hard drive died - PD Backup 9 Pro

I 've backed up my HD using PD Backup 9 Pro.
I think my HD died on my IBM T41.
When I turn on my T41, I get an error message - 0200: Failure Fixed Disk 0.
So I tried to use both the Paragon USB Recovery and CD Recovery, it gives me the same error message. My BIOS is turned on for USB.
1) Why can't I boot up using "Recovery"?
2) Is it because my HD is dead?
I thought that it would at least boot up to DOS.
3) Do I need a HD for boot up to DOS?
4) If I install a new HD, What do I do after that? Can I just install the HD and then use the "Recovery" to format the HD and then load the image?
Can some please help and provide me a step by step process?
Thanks

 

You should be able to boot regardless of the hard-disk problem but are you sure the boot device priority is set correctly?

 

I am pretty sure it's set correctly. I've used the Paragon Recovery USB before to reload my image when I had a virus about 2 months ago.
The only thing I can do is get into my BIOS.
The boot device is set up as follows:
1) -USB HHD
2) USB FDD
3) Legacy Floppy Drives
4) ATAPI CDO: HL-DT-STDVD-ROM
5) USB CD
6) IDE HDD0
7) PCI LAN:
8 ) IDE HDD1

Any help and guidiance is appreciated.

Thanks

 

It looks like it should work. Are you able to remove the HD and then see if will boot correctly. Maybe the failure is upsetting the system although I can't say that would be a common thing at all.

It doesn't have to be the drive itself that failed it could be the disk controller or related circuitry. However, the HD itself is almost always the problem for a disk failure.

 

get and install the new drive and then restore your backup onto it

 

Ok, I think you're onto something.
I removed the HD and rebooted using the Recovery USB.
Now it came up with the Boot Manager Screen.
What should I do now or what does this mean?
Thanks

 

Can you then select the device you have your Paragon Recovery program on and boot it?

 

Not sure what you mean.

I have my Recovery program on a USB memory Stick.
I have my Backup Image on an external Hard drive.
With the internal HD removed and USB stick in my T41, I started up my T41.
It is now able to boot up to the Boot Manager Screen.
What should I do now?
Should I reinsert the internal HD and then what?
Or should I just connect the external HD or connect both External and internal HD? and then what?
Sorry for asking so many steps but I don't want to screw it up worse.
Thanks

 

I'm with you now, you are referring to the Paragon startup screen which is labelled Boot Manager, I thought it was a laptop BIOS boot manager.

Since you don't have the HD installed, correct?, there is not much you can do. You could try running the Normal Mode Paragon program and we what it says but it might just say it can't find any hard-drives and I'm not sure what this would really prove. You don't have anything to restore the backup image to.

You could put the HD back in and try again but chances are that it will behave as before unless it was a bad connection problem, or has cooled down, or just magically fixed itself.

Does the BIOS see the internal drive and identify it? This would likely be on the first BIOS screen.

If you can't make the drive work then the obvious thing is to try a new or different drive in the machine and hope any problem are indeed the drive and not the controller/motherboard. If you have a USB adapter that you can plug onto the drive you could try the "bad" drive as a USB drive on another machine to see if it works.

Right now you aren't even getting into Windows so restoring the OS from a backup is not going to fix the problem even if you could access the disk.

 

I tried everything.

The Recovery loads when the HD is not in but wont load when its in.
If I slide the HD back in after it loads, it doesn't recognize the HD to restore.
I don't think its because I slid the HD in after the program loaded since I also connected my external HD after the Recovery program loaded and it recognized it.
The puzzling part is why doesn't my laptop boot up with the USB/CD Recovery when the HD is in? The boot order is USB and DVD/CD before internal HD. When it's in, it doesn't boot - when it's out , it boots....confusing.

Anyway, I think the HD is shot. My only concern is that it might be the controller/motherboard as you said and I dont want to waste my money on an old laptop if its not the HD.
What do you think - HD or controller/motherboard?

Thanks

 

If the HD isn't present when the BIOS scans the machine doesn't know it exists. Plugging in a USB device and having it recognized is how it is intended to work.

The odds are that it is HD but...

Have you tried just letting the machine sit there and see if will time-out and then boot your recovery media? If it does that I'd be a little bit more to suspect the HD but it really isn't a definitive test.

If you haven't any way of connecting the HD via USB to another machine or another laptop to put it in you could take the machine to a computer store. They likely would have a HD to try or another machine to try your HD in but it will likely cost you some money. My preference would be one of the small mom and pop computer stores rather than a big box store operation but that's just my preference.

 

I just decided to order a new HD and hope it's the HD that's gone bad.
The new HD will be bare.
Can you tell me if I need to format the HD or will the backup image copy the format over to the new HD?
If I need to format, do I need to do it before I use the Recovery program or can I load the Recovery and format the HD through the Recovery program and then copy my image to the new HD.
I think there was a feature to format the HD in the program, not sure, might be confused with the Paragon Partition Manager.
Just like to get the proper steps before I start.
Thank you for all your help - greatly appreciate it.

 

Formatting a hard-drive these days, unlike 20+ years ago, just sets up the filesystem structure. When you restore the image the old filesystem structure containing the links to the files in the image will be restored and overwrite anything you setup by formatting before restoring - so it is a waste of time.

Good luck.

 

Seekforever,

The new HD (which is in the mail) will be 120GB and the bad HD is 40 GB.
So I'm thinking I will need to format it - am I wrong thinking this?
Also, I just opened up the Simple Restore Wiz and did a trial run and came across where it has two boxes to check off - Resize proportionally & Restore to different hardware configuration. When I check off the latter, a warning comes up about inserting OS CD/DVD, possibly locating drivers, etc.
Now I am confused. Do I check any of these boxes? I thought I can just restore 40 GB to 120 GB HD and that's it with an extra 80GB. Since I am not restoring to the same HD (different hardware) and it's a different size from the original HD also, can I not check off any boxes and the first 40 GB of 120 gb will be used for the image? I dont have any OS CDs or know where the drivers are, etc.
Or do I need to check off the RESTORE TO DIFFERENT HARDWARE CONFIGURATION since it's a different and larger HD?
Thanks again

 

Actually I'm a rather new Paragon user but installing a different HD is not a different hardware configuration - that would be if you had a different motherboard or a lot of other devices that are different from the ones in the image. Drivers would be required and that's why the CD/DVD is required. Anyway that is not your situation.

You could resize proportionally which probably means each partition will be 120/40=3 times bigger than on your existing drive. Is your drive a single or multiple partitions and if multiple what's on them. If one of them is manufacturer's recovery partiton, increasing its size is usually a waste because you don't need it any bigger than it is.

If it is a single partition and you want to have just the one partition then a prop. resize will be fine. If you want to just keep 40 GB for C then don't resize. You should then be able to use Windows Disk Management later to then partition the remaining 80GB as you wish. I personally like to have 2 partitions. One for the OS and applications (C) and the other to store data files and even images of C on. The choice is yours. Remember that since you restored the image once to get the system running if you don't like it you can do it again with a different configuration.

 

For being new to Paragon you seem to be very knowledgable and I appreciate you helping me.
My bad HD has two partitions, one for the manufacturers recovery partition which I think is hidden and the other partition being my C drive which has my OS and everthing else. The manufacturers recovery partition is about 5 GB, I think. Like you said, I wouldn't want to resize proportionally since its a waste of space for the recovery partition, so if I don't check anything, do you think it would just copy it the way it is to the new HD, ie. 5gb for the recovery partition and the 35GB to the remaining space on the new HD?
If that is what the Paragon program does then I will not check anything.
Thanks again

 

Rec'd my new HD.
It was the HD that was bad and not the controller/motherboard.
The process of loading my backup image was easier than I thought.
I installed the new HD and plugged in the USB with the Recovery program.
At 1st it didn't load fully right away. I had to pull out and replug the HD and after that the Recovery program loaded fully.
I clicked on Main Recovery, then plugged in my ext HD with the backup image, then clicked Simple Restore and followed the steps in the program. I didn't check off any boxes (Resize proportionally & Restore to different hardware configuration). What it did was load my image of 33gb to the 1st 33gb of the new HD and left the remaining gb as unallocated. I then created a new partition of the unallocated space (I could have resized the 33gb partition as one partition but didn't). I used Paragon Partition Manager but I think the Recovery Program has the option to create a new partition but not resize. Now I have two partition, one with the boot OS as the 1st partition and the 2nd partition as another drive. Just make sure the 1st partition (boot OS partition is marked as ACTIVE otherwise it will not boot up as I had this problem). Somehow I marked the 1st partition as not ACTIVE when I created the 2nd partition and when I tried to restart my laptop, it wouldn't boot up as it couldn't find my OS. I had to reload the Recovery Program and change the partition to ACTIVE.
My laptop is now much quieter and faster.
I want to thank Seekforever for all his help.

And thank you Paragon for such a great Backup and Recovery program

PS. I bought a WD Scorpio 120 GB PATA (IDE) drive. Model # WD1200BEVE.
Any 2.5 IDE, PATA or EIDE (all the same) as long as it's not SATA will work.
Just make sure the large GB size (over 160 gb) will be ok for your laptop.
Its something to do with the BIOS recognizing it.

 

That's great news and I am happy to have been able to assist you.

I should have been a little more specific, although I'm a new Paragon user I've been imaging with another product for some time and they are all similar but sometimes it is the slight differences in how they do things or the user-interface that can cause things to not work as expected.

I also have forgotten to specify marking the partition as active.

Now you are an expert and have first hand experience showing why an image is so convenient in the case of a drive failure or other disaster.