HELP: InitDiskIllegal Drive:00 Sector:0

[Chris]

Just bought Seagate 2700.10 160GB ATA last week, installed XP, and moved all my data to logical drive D:
Now, the system fails to boot. The system will usually freeze right after HD detection.

Using Seagate Diagnostics boot floppy, the program failed to start, and it says :

InitDiskIllegal Partition Table
Illegal Partition Table Drive 0 Sector 0

Is this a hardware or software failure ?
Sector 0 is where MBR is located, so it must have something to do with Master Boot Record. But can MBR damage cause such severity that even a Seagate Diagnostic Tools fails to start ? Even Ontrack Disk Manager fails to start.

 

[DonDon]

If you want to try to repair the MBR, you can do that with a Dos boot floppy. Let the dos floppy (or CD) boot up, and type in fdisk /mbr and it will then try to reinstall the MBR.

Using Seagate Diagnostics boot floppy, the program failed to start, and it says :

InitDiskIllegal Partition Table
Illegal Partition Table Drive 0 Sector 0

Is this a hardware or software failure ?

Is this the Seatools program not starting up, or does it fail while you are starting the test on the drive?

It kinda sounds like you have a dead drive to me.

Don

 

[Chris]

This puzzles me a lot.
I tried again, and this time Seagate Diagnostics continued after giving me "Illegal Partition Table Drive 0 Sector 0". It went to the first test screen, and I tried Basic Test and the test failed right away. When this happened, the harddisk made noises like "TICKKK TICKK TICKKK".

Nervous all my data was completely lost, I tried it on another computer at home, and it worked without a problem. I could access all the partitions & the data without errors. I backed up all the data right away. Who knows I was just being lucky !!!
Tried on the first computer again...same problem again....TICKK TICKK TICKK & it still failed the Seagate Basic Diagnostic Test. I tried on my other computer & run Seagate Diagnostics ...."PASSED".

I thought the data cable was bad, so I replaced it on my 1st comp, and it still failed. Tried another cable , still failed. Tried on PCI IDE controller, still failed. Running Memtest to test memory & processor problem, all passed flying colors. Tried on Antec 550W PSU, still failed. I have no clue what was happening.

Tried again on my 2nd comp, the harddisk works without a problem. Bad mobo ?
I tried another harddisk on the same cable, and it worked. So, the mobo is good.
Tried again the 160GB Seagate , AND IT WORKED THIS TIME. No TICKING sound.
So far so good. But still the mystery worries me. Why it previously failed ?

Could the problem be the harddrive itself having some inconsistent reliability ?
My older Seagate had the same problem. Sometimes it worked fine, but sometimes it started that ticking sound & locked the system unpredictably.

I was completely anxious. I don't know what to do or what to expect now.

 

[Deleted member 133315]

sounds like the controller on the motherboard is bad