How can I "ignore"a dying hard drive?

[Bart Silverstrim]

Scott (angrykeyboarder) wrote:
> Bart Silverstrim spake thusly on 194301624 ::
>> Scott (angrykeyboarder) wrote:
>>> I've got 4 identical internal drives (Maxtor 7Y25050 - 250 GB SATA
>>> 1.5GB/s - if anyone cares).
>>>
>>> One of them is dying and has been for some time.
>> I apologize if I'm missing something, but why not get the data off that 
>> dying drive and physically remove it? 
> 
> You are missing something. I should have explained.
> 
> The drive is unformatted so there's nothing on it (which I did explain)
> but..
> 
> 	Since all of the drives are identical. I'm not sure which one it is.
> 	Even if I knew, I looked at removing them and was overwhelmed by it so
> I'm going to pay someone else to do that for me. I'm a software guy. I'm
> all thumbs when it comes to hardware (despite my having some
> understanding of it).

Others will no doubt correct me, but on those drives there should be 2 
cables.  One is the SATA cable, one is power.  If I were unsure which is 
which, you should be able to turn off the computer, open it up, unplug 
one of the power cables, turn on the machine and see if it boots and if 
so if the error messages are there.  If they are, you have the wrong 
drive.  If they're gone, you found it.  If it doesn't boot, you know 
which drive is your boot drive.  Repeat one by one until you have it 
identified and removed.  Once you have found the bad drive remove both 
connections and unscrew it from the drive cage and remove the drive.

Technically, you may be able to trace the cables to which hard disk is 
identified by bus labeling to the right SATA connection, but barring 
that the "simplest" way may be what I just proposed above.

-Bart