That Damn PC: Hardware, Software, Virus, Malware, PC Troubleshooting,

6 opinions for Hard Drive Forensics

• Destroying a damaged hard drive » The PC Doctor
  Jun 6, 2006 at 10:19 am

  […] That Damn PC  has a post that I think is thought-provoking.  The author (Aaron Brazell) is looking for a way to to securely destroy a hard drive with a damaged head.  This is a bit of a problem because you can’t run overwriting utilities on such a drive. […]

• Bob
  Dec 26, 2006 at 12:43 pm

  My friend gave me one harddisk for installation
  I pluged that into my PC, (i.e. PIII, 256MB RAM )
  & Repartitioned & reformated it & Instal WinXp_SP2 & other basic software
  HDD was running very fine in my PC
  Now when i gave him that HDD it was not running in his PC
  I tried to plug & run in 3 other PC (PIII, Celeron & PIV) but it did run
  When i plug it, it shows option Safe Mode, Starts Windows Normally & other options
  but after i select something it just hold for 5-6 sec & shows blue screen error
  ” x9c9028xz hardware fault ” something like that
  & PC restarts
  even if i select safe mode it load some file (like normaly hdd do in starting in safe mode)
  & again shows same blue screen & PC restarts
  I tried evey possible way, like changing PC, changing Jumper, changing options from bios but failed to start
  Now i took back HDD in my home
  & strange its running its running fine here at my home
  Pls help what to do………………
  Can u tell me some idea abt that blue screen

  In my friends PC i attached one other HDD (to know wheter that PC has any hardware fault or not, but with that HDD it was running)

  Pls help……………..

• Mary Ford
  Dec 28, 2006 at 2:27 pm

  Gosh, Bob, you worked so hard, but you’ve been foiled by a policy which customizes windows to the hardware of the computer Windows is installed on!

  when you installed windows, you installed it for YOUR computer, with its own hardware and drivers. The blue screen is probably related to that, but I’m not sure. You can always look up that code in Microsoft’s code database….

  In any case, please try installing windows on your friend’s computer. Gosh, Windows licensing is pretty strict: 1 license per computer.

  Good luck!

• Joe Jaye
  Feb 27, 2008 at 12:59 pm

  I was told to erase any magnetic surface, write FF’s in every position and it would be impossible to recover any proir date. Now I understand that this isn’t true??????????

• sean
  Nov 6, 2008 at 2:05 pm

  i have this cpu a friend gave kinda old but it has xp on it. he sent it over here so i could clean his cpu of spy ware and adware but now since ive had it window wont load up it will act like its starting and you will see the windows logo then it just goes back to the last known good configurations screen every mode ive tried and the windows logo pops up as if im gonna go to the desk top then back to the safe mode screen i also cant accesss his bios settings or anything because he has a password that he doesnt know i even tried to just install xp op over top of it and it still does the same thing i dont know what to do now ive tried disconnecting the hdd and reconnecting it and the same results. oh it also says s.m.a.r.t. drive detected disabled is his hard drive bad ?

• Sravan
  Nov 7, 2008 at 9:43 am

  Hi Sean, sorry I’m not an authority on these things.

  There are ways to remove/reset BIOS passwords: http://www.dewassoc.com/support/bios/bios_password.htm

  S.M.A.R.T actually monitors and warns before a hard drive fails, but that itself being disabled sounds uneasy.

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