Where's my effing F: gone?

Post by **spicemuseum** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 11:00 pm

Some time ago I put a replacement 80 gig Maxtor into my X3 equipped box. I used HeXEn to build it.

Today I finally got around to FTPing a bunch of stuff (65 gig or so) to the F: drive. Before the FTP session completed transfer slowed down significantly. I decided to halt the queue and reboot. When I rebooted the box, XBMC reported F: Unavailable. I subsequently ran XBPartitioner to try to restore it, to no avail. And once again for good measure, no change.

F: is gone. Ideas anyone?

fxmech · Post by **fxmech** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 2:31 am

Hi, if you are running the x3 bios, hold 'white' while booting to get to config live.

Choose F: only from its respective menu, then try xbpartition again.

To any people who read this, if you have a 250 or bigger hdd use different cluster sizes.

mrmajikbus45 · Post by **mrmajikbus45** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 4:55 am

Make sure your cluster sizes for your HDD size match what Xphazer says here. http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... 452#p14452

Good call fxmech.

fxmech · Post by **fxmech** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:20 am

I also recommend Xbpartition 1.3 since it does away with the bug in 1.2 that freezes the console. Not at home but Google will find the version pretty easily by now

Post by **Heimdall** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 12:26 pm

But he's already used XBPartitioner on his 80GB drive, and it didn't solve the problem.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall seeing this problem before with an X3, and there being an easy fix ... but I can't remember what it was. If only we had an archive of the Xbox Scene forums...

Try this: Boot with HeXEn or Frosty's Rescue Disc (which automatically load a different BIOS), and see if the F partition is still unavailable. Check from UnleashX and XBMC, just to be on the safe side.

Post by **spicemuseum** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:43 pm

Thanks for the advice guys - good general advice, but I'm afraid that's not it in this case (I'd already checked). This one is wacky.

Further investigation:
- the X3 config screen's background animation runs really slowly and jerkily with this Maxtor attached and it's unresponsive to controller inputs, but if I revert back to the original hard disc (which luckily, and unusually, I kept) then it's fine. So this points me at a failing hard disc - although I've no idea why it should have that sort of interaction with the X3 config screen, nor why it has no trouble running XBMC nor the other apps still on the E: drive - ideas anyone?

- it can take several attempts to get into X3 config screen, often at start-up with white pressed it goes to error 5 rather than the config screen. This suggests that the modchip is intermittent because, yes the disc is not locked (error 5), but the modchip shouldn't care about that, so perhaps it's trying to start-up with the on-board (v1.6) standard BIOS?

Post by **spicemuseum** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:45 pm

Heimdall wrote:Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall seeing this problem before with an X3, and there being an easy fix ... but I can't remember what it was. If only we had an archive of the Xbox Scene forums...

Try this: Boot with HeXEn or Frosty's Rescue Disc (which automatically load a different BIOS), and see if the F partition is still unavailable. Check from UnleashX and XBMC, just to be on the safe side.

Yes, I tried that too yesterday, same result - no effing F:.
BTW, our posts crossed, I didn't see yours before I posted mine, so check my further findings in the post above...

Post by **Heimdall** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:58 pm

I'd agree with your analysis - dodgy drive. Do you have a PC with an IDE port that you can plug the drive into? Running Partition Magic (or an Ubuntu Live CD) will show you the drive's SMART stats, which might provide more information.

Post by **spicemuseum** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 4:18 pm

Heimdall wrote:Running Partition Magic (or an Ubuntu Live CD) will show you the drive's SMART stats, which might provide more information.

Exactly.

X80X dismantled*, disc plugged into my old PC - Ubuntu's Disk Utility reports SMART Status Not Supported, and performing a benchmark test errors on disc I/O, formatting the drive errors too. It'll be going in my WEEE** bucket.

Would still welcome an explanation of why a faulty HDD causes the X3 config to misbehave, though....?

* "disassembled" for those from the other side of the Atlantic.
** no doubt also amusing for those from outside UK, ...G0091E it.

mrmajikbus45 · Post by **mrmajikbus45** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:17 pm

The IT guy at my old job used to hand me and my old boss the dead HDDs that he would collect every quarter. We would then take them out to his farm and have target practice. That was our WEEE bucket.

Post by **Dan Dar3** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:01 pm

Off-topic, but there are quite a few useful parts in dead hard-drives (platters, magnets etc) - I'm sure shooting clay pots can be just as fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL74EyCXuGg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y56uTTFmCaI

Post by **Heimdall** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:09 pm

We used to use the platters as coasters, and attach the magnets to filing cabinets to use as coat hooks.

Where's my effing F: gone?

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