Hi, I have this Segate 320 GB SATA Hard Drive and it was working for 6 months until now. First, the screen went into a blue screen saying that there is something wrong with atapi.sys or something like that, then I restarted the computer and it detects the hard drive, but it does not boot from it. Okay, I took it and tested it on another computer, same thing persists on that one as well with this hard drive. The biggest problem is, I spent several days reinstalling all my programs and this hard drive crashed for no reason. I think it got over heated, but see, here is what is stupid about this hard drive. It displays in the BIOS that it's a hard drive and that you can boot from it like the hard drive isn't damaged, but it takes like a 2 second delay before the BIOS reads it and then whenever I try to boot from it, it just sits there trying to read the hard drive and then tells me that there is an error with reading the data on the hard drive. What do I do? I don't want to go out and waste money and buy a new hard drive, PLUS waste my time reinstalling ALL my stuff which I took like many many days doing. Is there a way of AT LEAST getting my data out of the drive onto another Serial ATA Hard Drive?

More information is required than windows & all.

What version of windows and what service pack is on the CD? What motherboard?

Computer manufacturer?
Hard drive manufacturer?

aegis

OP did post the harddrive specs. I'm thinking 48bit LBA issues.

OOPs missed that Othehill. I was kinda upset about his not posting any specs. But he says that it has been working for 6 months. Wouldn't that rule it out?

No, if the BIOS is not 48 bit LBA compliant and you install WinXP you can end up writing to parts of the drive that can't be seen by the BIOS and the result is data loss or corruption.

All this takes some time to happen.

You're right, Othehill. If he was kinda slow in adding more to the drive and was a little lucky, I can see how it could last that long.

Jaw

Watch the POST screens at startup and see how the 320SATA is identified. I am thinking it may show as 127GB or so.

OtheHill, you can call me Jaw-Dun Thai Wraa instead haha!

Anyways, getting back to the hard drive, Sorry about not providing any spects. My Windows Operating System is Windows XP Professional and the motherboard is an ASUS P5B-F Motherboard. I already specified my HD manufacture (If you read my first sentence). The whole point is that, my hard drive isn't working on 2 of my systems which have SATA capibility. I think that it is damaged, but it broke like when I was using the computer. I think it over heated. Is there a way of fixing it?

If the harddrive isn't spinning up then you may be out of luck. Is the harddrive identified in the POST screens during the startup?

i think you better find a competent repairman that understands computer configuration.
haha

I'll just return the Hard Drive to TigerDirect and they'll probably replace it, but without or maybe with my data.

There is probably nothing wrong with the harddrive. The data on the drive may be corrupt or your WinXP installation may be messed up.