Eeyore wrote in message ...
Never seen this before.

A HDD of mine (IBM Deskstar 20GB IC35L020AVER07-0) 'died' when I restarted
Windows (XP btw FWIW). Windows shut down OK seemingly but wouldn't restart.

It totally 'locked up' the PC with no error message. Never seen anything
quite
like that before so it took me a little while to pinpoint it. The BIOS
found the
drive OK btw.

Anyway, I got things sorted and then re-attached it as a secondary drive.

Trying to look at it, Windows Explorer 'froze' for a bit but it did load a
drive
icon eventually. However Windows Explorer was of no further help.

I then used XP's command.com and got the cryptic message 'cyclic redundancy
error'.

Any ideas what's up ? Is the drive destined for silicon hell or is it
recoverable ? I'm wondering if the system area's data's been trashed for
example.

Graham



Hitachi probably made that drive for IBM. Download the Hitachi Feature Tool.
From it, you can create a floppy boot disk with programs that access the
drive in DOS bypassing windows. If the drive has a data problem F tool will
enable you to format and I think rewrite the MBR. If it is a hardware
problem with the disk, F tool will hang also.
bg