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NI has observed that many of the PXI/PXIe embedded controllers coming in for repair are misdiagnosed to have a bad hard drive. It turns out that the actual problem is either with software, file corruption, files system corruption or virus. NI provides a new version of Hard Drive Diagnostic Tool for Fujitsu and Seagate hard drives, having either English and non-English (localized) operating system environment, which will check the PXI/PXIe embedded controller for actual hard drive failures before you send it in for repair. This can save you time by eliminating the hard disk as the source of the problem. If the tool executes without any errors, then you may want to try re-imaging your drive using one of the methods described in Knowledgebase ID 2ZKC02OK: Hard Drive Recovery and OS Installation for PXI and VXI Controllers.
The purpose of this utility is to create a bootable USB flash disk that contains a hard disk drive (HDD) diagnostic program. This HDD diagnostic program can be used to report problems with hard disk drives on PXI/PXIe embedded controllers. We strongly recommend that you run this HDD diagnostic program before returning any PXI/PXIe embedded controller for repair. To run this utility you will need Microsoft Windows operating system and a USB flash disk. You may want to create a backup for any data stored on USB flash disk prior to installing HDD diagnostic utility as it will be formatted so that, when booted, it automatically executes the HDD diagnostic utility. After confirming which hard drive, either Fujitsu or Seagate, your embedded controller is carrying follow the steps in the links below to create a bootable USB diagnostic disk.
LICENSE NOTES:
This software uses makebootfat, an open source product distrubted under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). The source code to the version of makebootfat used in this product is available in the "CreateNIUSBDiagDisk\usbfiles\makebootfat" folder attached below. You can obtain the most recent version of makebootfat at http://freshmeat.net/projects/makebootfat/.
This software uses the FreeDOS kernel, an open source product distributed under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). You can obtain the source code to the FreeDOS kernel used for this product at ftp://ftp.ni.com/support/pxi/NI Embedded Controllers USB Flask Disk Utility. You can obtain the most recent copy at the FreeDOS web site at http://www.freedos.org.
Reader Comments | Submit a comment »
Inquiry: size of flash drive needed?
How big is the utility(ies) included in the
install package? That is, how small/cheap can
I go on the flash drive that I'm dedicating
to this task?
Thanks, both for the tool and the info.
- May 29, 2008
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