WARNING !!! ATI 8.0 (937) KILLS WD DRIVES !!!

WARNING !!! ATI 8.0 (937) KILLED MY WD DRIVES !!!

I downloaded the trial version in order to clone my Win98 (20GB Quantum Fireball) C: drive to my (40GB Western Digital Protege) D: drive.

Everything proceeded fine ...

I was even able to "Explore" the D: drive and it did indeed look like an exact copy of the C: drive ...

... Then I re-booted ...

The 40GB drive no longer works !!
Even the BIOS can't find it !!
I could not be sure that the drive was perfect beforehand, but it had been running fine as my D: drive for a couple of months.

I thought ..."perhaps it was flawed before I started" ...

So, I swapped out the "bad" 40GB drive with a brand new 250GB WD Caviar drive, running off a Promise Ultra100TX2 IDE controller.
That drive worked fine as a D: drive for a few days.

Then I got the STUPID idea to download the True Image 8.0 Trial software again, and clone the 20Gb drive to the 250GB drive.

Well, guess what happened

MY 250GB DRIVE IS NOT WORKING NOW !!!!!

I AM REALLY NOT AMUSED BY THIS !!!

If anybody has a solution/fix/workaround for this I would very much appreciate your sharing it with me.

Additional Info:

I booted my system from a rescue floppy and observed that FDISK could no longer detect the new drives.

 

Doubtful, Wd drives have 3 settings for the jumpers. Master, Master with Slave and Slave. Check your jumpers.

 

I never had problems and I have WD120. I wish I could give you a solution/fix/workaround

 

I triple checked the jumpers and all power and data connections.

Just to clarify, I had not touched the inside of the computer between the time the drives were working (ie. before cloning) until they stopped working (ie. after cloning).

All I did was to reboot, the BIOS spent an eternity probing for disks, then finally gave up.

Win98 booted from my original 20GB C: drive, but in both cases (after 40GB clone and after 250GB clone) it was running v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y .
If I disconnect the afflicted drive, my system boots up and runs as before (but with 1 fewer drive).

 

Attach the WD drives to something other than the Promise card and see what happens.

 

Well, only the 250GB drive used the Promise card (because my BIOS doesn't recognize drives that large), however I may be able to find a system at work to try the drive in (in order to eliminate the controller card as a possible fault).

On the other hand, the 40GB drive used the secondary connector on the same ribbon cable that my C: drive uses, from the built-in motherboard controller, and it experienced the same problem as the 250GB drive. (ie. working -> cloning -> not working)

 

Hello Meatloaf,

Here Is a possible solution to get your 250 GB drive working again. Make a boot floppy with wddiag.exe on it. This can be done from the CD that came with your drive. Boot from the floppy and see if the program recognizes your 250 GB drive. If it does, write all zeros to the drive. This should get it back to the state it was in when you bought it. Writing all zeros can take a very long time. You can probably get away with cancelling the operation after about 5 minutes. This will write enough of the drive at the beginning to work.

If this works, stay away from the cloning feature.

Best of luck,
mustang

 

You sure you didn't set the WD drive as a master, not single? If it's the only drive, (and if I remember correctly,) you have to set it as 'single'.. which (again, if I remember correctly,) should be done by removing the jumper entirely.

 

Also, the slow boot.. with the POST searching for drives, is due to the drives being configured wrong, single/master/slave. It's got nothing to do with what's on the drive or Acronis. I clone WD drives often and have never had such a problem.

Don't set the WD as master if it's the only drive. Check WD's website for instructions on how the jumpers should be set if it's not clearly explained on the drive's label.

Also, if you cloned C: to D:, then without changing drives, booted your old C: drive, and browsed the newly imaged D: drive.. Windows may have seen two 'active' boot partitions and 'fixed' the D: drive, so it isn't active again. Of course, this would all be a moot point if you don't have the jumpers correct. You'd never get to that point.

 

Unfortunately, my drive didn't come with a CD. I'll check the WD website for a diagnostic download.

 

False Alarm !! Re: WARNING !!! ATI 8.0 (937) KILLS WD DRIVES !!!

Thanks, I read the documentation on the website. It looks as though WD interprets the term "Master" somewhat differently than Quantum does.

... Although my drives are operational once again, I still don't trust this Acronis stuff enough to tempt fate again. (I tried 9.0, which faulted during boot. Thankfully, I had backed up my system files).

I'll just swap drives the "old-fashioned" way, by re-installling all the software onto the new drive, then copying "My Documents" over from the original disk.

 

Re: False Alarm !! Re: WARNING !!! ATI 8.0 (937) KILLS WD DRIVES !!!

You didn't mention whether you followed the recommended procedure for cloning:
1. Mount the drive and be sure it is recognized. You did this.
2. Clone the old drive to the new drive with TI. Do NOT reboot.
3. Shut down the system.
4. Remove the old drive from the system.
5. Move the newly cloned drive to where the old boot drive was, or reset the jumpers or move the cable as necessary to make it the boot drive.
6. Now, for the first time since cloning, power up the system and it will boot from the clone.

If you power up the system with both drives attached, Windows will be very uphappy to see two identical drives and unpredictable things occurr. This is a Windows function and not due to TI.

 

I know a couple of people have mentioned jumpers already, but I thought I would just re-iterate that the meaning of them has changed with modern drives.

Older drives just had a choice of master or slave.

Modern drives have a third setting called single and the bus termination does NOT WORK correctly/reliably if you select master or slave when the drive is the only one connected to the cable. In that case it MUST be set to SINGLE.

So it is worth checking you are swapping the new drive from slave to single (assuming you are removing the original drive, not swapping them over), not from slave to master.

 

Yes, I've always found that you have to be aware of that WD jumper difference between Single drive only and Master with Slave. It could be a pain sometimes and when you least expect it. That is why I stick to Maxtors whenever I can.

Is WD the only manufacturer that does this?

 

Hello Meatloaf,

You may follow jmk94903's suggestions and try to clone again, but I recommend you do the following:

- Download the Acronis Report utility from http://www.acronis.com/files/support/AcronisReport.exe;
- Run Acronis Report utility and select the "Create bootable floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the floppy drive and proceed with creating the bootable diskette;
- Boot the computer under consideration from this diskette and wait for report creation process to complete;
- Send the 'report.txt' file from the floppy disk to support@acronis.com along with the link to yuor post. This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disks partition structure.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

will a bootable floppy run from a usb floppy drive?

 

Man, I haven't messed with Master/Slave settings in a long, long time. Put the jumper on Cable Select (sometimes called CSEL), and the drive will figure out whether it's Master or Slave based on which connector on the cable it's plugged into. I think CSEL is the way most drives are configured by default when they're shipped nowadays.