Reformatting HD and killing it

lon_don

I started getting quite a few CRC errors while reading files off my PC's HD so decided to back up everything (what I could back up anyway, the files which got CRC errors were not accessible so I gave up on them), reformat the HD and reinstall XP (as some of the files in windows\system32 were also affected, giving me numerous system error messages).
So I got out the old XP Setup CD-Rom, booted from the CD to run XP Setup, and when prompted I chose to delete the existing partition on the HD, re-create a new partition, and format it (not the "quick" format option but the second -much slower- one, as I thought this format would be more thorough and eventually mark & set aside all the bad sectors which might have caused all the CRC errors). The format was indeed very slow, after 12 hours or so it only managed to format about 25% of the (200GB) HD. Unfortunately at this point OH accidentally hit the switch and turned off the PC right in the middle of the formatting. When I now attempt to rerun Setup and resume/restart the formatting, Setup does recognize the physical HD (as does the BIOS, as "Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0") but then says it "cannot access this disk" and will not even give me the option to format it . Does this mean that this HD is toast now, i.e. I can just throw it away, or is there some way I can salvage it ?
Also my PC is vintage 2000, i.e. the HD is connected to the MB thru an old-fashioned IDE port, can I still buy a new HD but one using old IDE port ?
Thanks vm for your help.

xplora

Yes, it should work. Sometimes hard drives like seagate gives 5 years warranty, how old is your computer?

Some case especially when you purchase from vendor need a special screw driver in order to open it, make sure that you are able to open the case before purchasing a new drive!

bat999

Hi
You could use GParted.
Download it and burn it to CD.
Then boot from the CD.
It's similar to Partition Magic, but it's freeware.
It will show you your hard drives graphically and allow you to reformat and/or repartition them.
You can download it from here:- http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

lon_don

The PC, like I said, is vintage 2000 (I built it myself some 7 years ago -> no problem to open the PC case!)
The HD is a 200GB Maxtor bought in 2003 so I don't think I can get a warranty or anything to work (lost the purchase receipt a long time ago anyway), anyway it's not a huge loss as I believe new 200GB HD is only about 30-40 quids on places like ebuyer, it's just that I have to wait for the new HD to be delivered before I can reinstall the PC meaning I am PC-less for at least a week or so. Also my bigger concern is the new HD won't be compatible with my old MB (I have not followed new technologies in recent years, but believe new HD now comes with Super ATA or Super IDE interface or something, which I am sure is incompatible with my old MB which only has 2 standard vanilla old-time IDE slots).
...So I am wondering if there is still something I could do to salvage my Maxtor HD (but am not holding out too much hope).

xplora

Receipt is not important when claiming a hard disk, i have been claiming for more than 7 hard disk from Seagate and Western digital directly without a receipt.

Since your hard disk is purchased in 2003, then you may have a chance of claiming warranty by simply going to http://support.seagate.com/customer/warranty_validation.jsp to check if your hard drives is still being covered.

Hard disk warranty life can be vary, it could be 1,3 or 5 years.

Good luck. I hope your hard drives have 5 years warranty life then!

lon_don

Thanks for the advice xplora. I actually located the original packaging of the HD, and inside the box there is a leaflet stating that it has only a "Maxtor 1-year Limited Warranty" which I suppose has long expired by now... I also found and tried to use the original Maxtor-supplied format and installation utility CD-Rom (something called Maxblast3) which came with the HD, but sadly it also failed to recognize it's own hardware, let alone format it... I have not tried Gparted as suggested by bat999 (the CD/DVD Writer is on the PC which can't be booted now, the old laptop I am currently using has no Writer, so don't know how to create a bootable CD...), and in any case I doubt that it would work given that Maxtor's own utility failed to recognize or access the disk... I wish I had kept one of my obsolete HDs (the ones who used to be 5GB or 10GB) so at least I could install XP on it to boot the PC and find some tools on the net to try to repair the Maxtor HD. Is it possible at all to create (and boot from) a bootable USB pen/stick (again I doubt this very much as I guess the USB drive needs Windows P&P to be recognized by the PC ?)
Anyway what is the best place to buy a standard IDE HD now ? A quick search on these forums seems to suggest ebuyer+Google check out are cheapest right now, any other suggestion ?
Thanks for your help & advice.

Cricri

Did you try PowerMax to perform a low level format?

lon_don

Yes there was an option on the Maxblast CD to create a bootable floppy which contains the PowerMax utility. Sadly it also failed to detect the HD.

Any "industrial-strength" low-level format utility you could think of that I might try (before throwing the HD away) ? Thanks.

albertross_2

If the bios can't detect the drive, software isn't going to be able to see it either. Does it still spin/are all cables secure?

lon_don

lon_don wrote: »

When I now attempt to rerun Setup and resume/restart the formatting, Setup does recognize the physical HD (as does the BIOS, as "Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0") but then says it "cannot access this disk" and will not even give me the option to format it .

The BIOS DOES recognize the HD ("Primary Master Maxtor etc... "quoting by memory as I am not in front of the PC right now), as does XP Setup ("Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi"). It's just that none of the utilities I have tried so far (XP Setup, Maxtor's Maxblast3, Maxtor's PowerMax, even an old DOS FDISK) could access the HD (all report Read Failed or something similar)

albertross_2

The maxtor utilities are the lowest level you can get.