Half a Hard Drive Full of Grief - SOLVED!

[2Turtles]

I'm a bit baffled here as I bought a used 40gb Maxtor drive p/n: MX6L040J2 - before attempting anything I ran the Powermax hdd tests and it said it was fine so I slaved it (cable select and as a master and slave) to my win98se machine which saw it but couldn't do anything with it. I tried to format it and install win2k pro on it 3 or 4 times and each time it failed. Tonight I tried it in our Xp machine, which sees it but says it needs to be formatted and when you say ok it says "cannot be formatted"!

So while it was connected to the Xp machine I test it again, again it passes all tests - but when I look under utilities I found this information:

It sees a Maxtor drive and the serial no. correctly, in that line it says it is 40GB (as it should be) but when you click the plus it opens down and says: No Name 20GB Fat 16??

Any suggestions as to what I could/should do? Is this going to be a big ugly paper weight or is there a way for me to wipe it off, get the size corrected and use this drive in any of the 3 machines? Powermax 3, 4, and Maxblast 3 appear unable to erase or format it - it says it has done it successfully but when I go to install an o/s I get the same failure once it reaches the formatting drive part. I tried DOS fdisk'ing from a win98 and win2k but it fails at o/s installation. XP sees the hdd, but says it is 0 used, 0 free, file system raw and refuses to format it.

I'm new to XP, and don't have a floppy drive on the XP machine - what is the proper way to do a format with this o/s?

thank you for any advice.

Edited October 15, 2009 by 2Turtles

[jaclaz]

I'm new to XP, and don't have a floppy drive on the XP machine - what is the proper way to do a format with this o/s?

There is NO "proper" formatting/erasing you can do from XP.

Unless you want to do a "normal" 00 writing, which is doable, and should also be enough.

But you can use DOS allright.

If I were you I would use the SecureErase ATA function:

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

in order to be certain that there are NO "remnants", then I would try again the Manufacturer's tests.

If you want to go the "XP" way, you need to 00 out the whole drive, there are several suitable softwares, I would use Eraser:

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/features.php

One single pass of 00's is all you need.

Then I would also check the hard disk with "independent" utilities, like Victoria, MHDD or HDDscan:

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.03-Victoria/

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.01.22-HDDScan/

Cannot say if "drive capacity restore" would be useful/appropriate for your situation:

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/200...y-Restore-Tool/

http://blog.atola.com/restoring-factory-hard-drive-capacity/

jaclaz

[2Turtles]

Thanks much Jaclaz I am going to do SecureErase first and re-run the manufacturer's test as you suggest. From there am I good to go for an o/s installation or is a single pass of 00's still required?

Cheers!

**update**

I think I'm not doing something right - I downloaded the HDDerase, unzipped it and then burned the the files to a cd - but when I boot from cd it says "operating system cannot be found" doesn't the .iso file in that folder make the cd bootable?

When XP burned the files to cd it said:

"the file 'HDDERASE' has extra information attached to it that might be lost if you continue copying. The contents of the file will not be affected. Do you want to copy the file anyway?"

I said yes and burned the files. It is a cd-rw, could that be the problem?

Edited October 14, 2009 by 2Turtles

[2Turtles]

**update 2**

My fault with the bootable thing - so now I've used the Power2Go to make the disc bootable, but when it boots from the cd all it says it this:

1. FD 1.44MB System Type-(00)

I think it's saying it's a floppy, but this computer didn't come with a floppy - just cd/dvd. There weren't any other HDDerase image files to use, I don't know what to do now

This is very hard with this XP machine as I don't know anything about this o/s and it is very hard to find anything. Unzipping is not easy, burning simple cd was very problematic, it has constant pop-ups for so many things complaining about security, updates, what do you want to do? every time you open that **** cd drive... etc. etc.. etc.. does this thing never shut up??

Anyway I sure hope I don't have to use any more XP to fix this hdd - I have a rotten headache now.

[jaclaz]

OK, FORGET about SecureErase.

Download the WHOLE UBCD .iso:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Download IMGBURN:

http://www.imgburn.com/

Use the latter to burn UBCD to a CD.

jaclaz

[2Turtles]

Thanks again jaclaz, I have downloaded the UBCD .iso and already had imgburn (must have been from one of last years learning adventures here ) I had already started a "zero-fill" attempt with Maxblast 4 again before you had replied and since it was 37% I thought I might as well let it finish. I see now that the UBCD already has a newer Maxblast 5 on it, should I let Mblast 4 finish it's zero-fill business or are there different types of "00" writing and I'm using the wrong program anyway?

[jaclaz]

I thought I might as well let it finish. I see now that the UBCD already has a newer Maxblast 5 on it, should I let Mblast 4 finish it's zero-fill business or are there different types of "00" writing and I'm using the wrong program anyway?

Well, it won't do any harm, at the most it won't change the problem.

Difference when using Secureerase may be speed, of course, by using internal ATA commands the whole thing is done "internally" (i.e. no data is sent to the hard drive) this is remarkably faster, as it simply by-passes any bottleneck that may exist in the bus, cable, adapter, or OS driver.

Secureerase is inside the UBCD.

Cannot say whether MaxBlast uses the direct ATA commands or not, but I presume it doesn't.

jaclaz

Edited October 14, 2009 by jaclaz

[2Turtles]

jaclaz

Once again you have simplified and solved that which masquerades as disaster...

Thank you so much

[jaclaz]

Only too glad to have contributed in getting another bunny happy.

http://www.msfn.org/board/cant-access-repa...727-page-9.html

jaclaz