LAB 6-6 TROUBLESHOOTING HARD DRIVES

Objectives

The goal of this lab is to help you troubleshoot common hard drive problems. After completing

this lab, you will be able to:

➤ Simulate common hard drive problems

➤ Diagnose and repair common hard drive problems

➤ Document the process

 

Materials Required

This lab will require the following:

➤ A computer with a hard drive subsystem that you can sabotage

➤ Bootable disk

➤ PC toolkit

➤ Workgroup of 2-4 students

 

Activity Background

This lab will give you practice diagnosing and remedying common hard drive problems.

 

ACTIVITY

  1. Verify that your hard drive is working by using a command prompt or Windows Explorer to display files on the drive.
  2. Switch computers with another team.
  3. Sabotage the other team’s computer by doing one of the following:
    1. Remove or incorrectly configure the drive jumpers
    2. Remove the power connector from the drive
    3. Switch data cables to place devices on incorrect IDE channels
    4. Disable IDE controllers in CMOS setup
  4. Return to your computer and examine it for any symptoms of a problem.
  5. Before doing anything to fix the problem, answer the following questions relating to the problem’s symptoms:
    1.  What symptoms would a user notice? (Describe the symptoms as the user might describe them.)

 

    1. Does the system boot from the hard drive?

 

    1. Does POST display the hard drive?

 

    1. Can you boot from a floppy disk and change to the drive in question?

 

    1. Does the CMOS HDD Autodetect option detect the hard drive?
  1. State your initial diagnosis.

 

 

  1. Diagnose and repair the problem.
  2. Below, list the steps required to confirm your diagnosis and solve the problem.
    1. __________________________________________________________
    2. __________________________________________________________
    3. __________________________________________________________
    4. __________________________________________________________
    5. __________________________________________________________
    6. __________________________________________________________
    7. __________________________________________________________

 

  1. Answer the following questions relating to your final conclusions:
    1. What was the problem?

 

 

    1. What did you do to correct the problem? Was your preliminary diagnosis correct?

 

 

  1. Repeat Steps 1-8, choosing actions at random from the list in Step 2, until your team has performed all the items listed in Step 2. Be sure to write down the relevant information (as instructed in the steps) for each problem.

 

Review Questions

1. What was the first indication that the power was disconnected from your drive?

 

 

2. What incorrect drive configuration would still allow you to access files on the hard drive by booting from the floppy?

 

 

3. What incorrect configurations have similar symptoms?

 

 

4. What problem resulted in no drives being detected except for the floppy drive?

 

 

5. List the steps required to use a drive whose partitions have been deleted.