Earlier I had intended to partition a hard drive with a GParted live CD. After booting from the live CD, it asked me what keyboard settings and region I wanted to use. I selected the appropriate options and, upon pressing enter to proceed, my computer locked up on a black screen with bright, vertical green lines stuck across the screen. After waiting for a bit, I shut off the computer and turned it back on again to find it freeze during the Intel logo screen during POST at code 5A. After multiple resets, the computer continued to freeze at code 5A on the same screen. On this screen there is simply the Intel logo, the code 5A, and text that tells me to press F2 to enter BIOS. However, as the computer is frozen immediately at this point, pressing F2 does nothing. After waiting for about 30 seconds, the motherboard speaker will beep when I press any keys on the keyboard. In other words, I can't access the BIOS or do anything else.

A google for the Intel error code 5A told me that it means "Resetting PATA/SATA bus and all devices". After disconnecting all three of my hard drives, the computer powered on and went through POST without any problems. After testing my hard drives one by one, the computer will get through POST normally with my other two hard drives, but continues to freeze at the Intel screen at code 5A while my WD5000AAKS is connected. Changing SATA ports does not fix the problem, and I have tried resetting the BIOS to its default settings to no avail.

My computer is currently working fine with my WD5000AAKS unplugged. While I would like to recover the hard drive, there is nothing on there of importance. I have no intention of spending money to get it fixed as I have no problem with buying a new hard drive as a replacement. The purpose of this post is to ask if I'm perhaps missing something that would fix my problem.

This is my first time experiencing a hard drive problem, and I know very little about the issue I'm having. My motherboard is an Intel D975XBX, and the hard drive had been running 24/7 for about 3 years. Thanks for reading.

EDIT: I would just like to add that I hadn't begun partitioning anything with the live CD as it froze up before it even got to the point where I could use the program.

hmmm,

well i think this is a very long story here
but here is some questions to u for ur case here:

1- Bios Detects ur HDD or not?
2- If detected, have u ever tried to connect ur hdd with USB to ur PC?

??

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to provide as many details as possible.

1- My bios detects my other two HDDs fine, it's just my WD5000AAKS that it has problems with. I can't even access the bios or do anything at all while it's plugged in, so I don't know. I'd suppose it's detecting something since it's freezing up.

2- I don't own an external enclosure, so no I haven't tried this. As I said in my post, there's nothing important on the hard drive and I'd rather just buy a new one since it's getting old/small anyway rather than spend money to recover the old one.

Thanks for the reply.

The disk "freezes" the POST as probably is stuck BSY due to firmware or most probably internal failure. Probably if you leave POST , it *may* timeout after a long time, but it's not guaranteed.

As you said, as it has been working for 3 years and there's nothing important, replace it - a post-mortem diagnose is totally useless (and 99% considering the load and the type of the drive is FW or head failure that make the drive act this way).

totally agree with BlackST
i guess it time now to replace it if data not important

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Thanks for the reply. I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything simple I could do to fix it. I'll be buying a new drive then.

Thanks again, everyone.