Problems formating External HDD

J_B

I was given a Maxtor 40GB HD out of auntie's PC (she had upgraded to a bigger HD) it has an Aug2001 sticker on it.
I bought a Pluscom caddy to put it in, formatted it and backed up some stuff onto it.
Anyway, I thought I re do my back up, so I plugged it in and Windows (7) immediately said it needed formatting, so I did just that.
Halfway through it stopped and suggested I started again. I tried this several times to no avail, so tried CCleaner drive wiper, but the same thing happened again
Shall I just bin it, or does anyone have any further suggestions??

poppellerant

Does it work okay outside the caddy? Have you tried taking it out the caddy and connecting it directly to the computer?

To be fair, it's a Maxtor harddrive - they are probably the least reliable brand of harddrives I have ever seen, with Seagate coming second.

For the sake of 40gb, I'd just buy a USB stick.

50Twuncle

Try scandisk - this will confirm whether it is salvageable or has bad sectors - but really 40Gb is not worth bothering with....

kwikbreaks

I don't disagree with the advice that 40GB isn't worth bothering with but remember when I paid £399 for a hard drive for an Amiga that from memory was 1/1000th the size at 40MB......

J_B

When I plug it in, Windows flashes up asking which auto-play option I would like to take. If I ignore this, it will pop up again.

I have tried right clicking in the notification area/ system tray and having 'ejected' it and got the 'safe to remove' option, it will then, after a while, bring up the auto-play option again.

Could that be a loose connection somewhere perhaps??

I will try scandisk now .....

J_B

Scandisk revealed nothing

Avoriaz

kwikbreaks wrote: »

I don't disagree with the advice that 40GB isn't worth bothering with but remember when I paid £399 for a hard drive for an Amiga that from memory was 1/1000th the size at 40MB......

I worked for IBM selling computer hardware and software for ten years in the 1980s.

250mb disk drives drives the size of a suitcase cost many thousands of pounds.

That was for 250mb not 250gb.

garynuman

Regardless of the condition the drive is in, I wouldn't trust *anything* to a 13 year-old drive!

Gaz

aerostar

If it is an IDE drive - 40 pin connector then with caddies you normally have to set the drive as MASTER.

Also download Mini Partition tool

http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

this will do more than windows format - though do double check what you are going to do !

aerostar

garynuman wrote: »

Regardless of the condition the drive is in, I wouldn't trust *anything* to a 13 year-old drive!

Gaz

Age does not necessarily come in to it - it is how the drive has been used/abused and how many hours it has run.

garynuman

aerostar wrote: »

Age does not necessarily come in to it - it is how the drive has been used/abused and how many hours it has run.

Would you backup to it? The OP is already experiencing problems.