Skip to main content

Common causes of "Invalid drive specification" messages.

There are several sets of circumstances that can return this status.

A. If the drive has not been partitioned (with FDISK) this message will be reported.

B. If the drive parameters (Cyl, Hd, Sec) set in CMOS DON'T match those of the drive this message will be returned indicating that the drive geometry read from the drive doesn't match what is entered in CMOS.

C. General hardware failure on the disk sub-system where the drive geometry cannot be read (causing the mismatch described in B). This could be a bad cable, misplaced cable (off by a pin or row) no DC power to the disk, bad disk PCB, incorrect jumpering on disk PCB. Any matter of problems that can cause the disk to be unreadable can return this error message.

NOTE!! On initial HDD install/upgrade I'd do a physical check on all the obvious things like cable placement, power connectors, listen to hear the disk seeking during it's POST test on pwr up. If this error occurs after the disk has been operating normally it is indicative of a failure of some type. May be hardware failure, or partition data may have been corrupted. This is NOT a good message to get from a working drive.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CMOS IC LAYOUT

3 comments
Read more

Download Barrons GRE 17th Edition

Post a Comment
Read more

Know The Beep

One Beep : DRAM refresh failure This may be due to - Bad memory chips - A bad DMA Chip - Bad memory addressing chips on the motherboard Two Beeps : Parity error or Parity Circuit failure -Your memory may not be seated properly on the mother board. -Unplug and plug it properly Three Beeps : Bad memory or bad mother board Four beeps : Timer failure in the RAM. Five Beeps : CPU chip may be dead Six Beeps : Keyboard controller may have failed Seven beeps : CPU is dead. Retry the connections and test. -Replace the whole motherboard. Eight Beeps : Video card is missing or Bad. Nine Beeps : Damaged ROM BIOS. -BIOS chip has to be replaced if it persists. Ten Beeps : CMOS shutdown. -Replace CMOS memory and associated chips. Eleven Beeps : Cache memory test has failed. -To enable cache memory try CTRL+ALT+SHIFT++. One long Beep and Three short Beeps: Memory failure One long Beep and Eight short Beeps : Video card failure. -Try to install video card in another slot. No Beeps : Che
Post a Comment
Read more