hard drive wont format

[grossac]

I got a hard drive that is detected by the bios but I would'nt boot up. So I decided to delete the partition and reinstall windows since there was no valuable data. IT just would'nt format. So I put the drive in a second computer as a slave and went into disk manager and created a partition and tried to format it again and still no succes. Now the drive is partition but it will just not format. It's a 40 gig drive and I would like to be able to salvage the sucker. I dont know what happened to it caus it's from my cousins computer and he said 1 morning he tried to boot up but getting cannot access hd error. I've looked around but without success. Does anyone have any ideas or do you think it's just pooched.

 

[JRBeltman]

No Virus detection on in the BIOS?
No strange 'read only' jumpers (extremely rare) on hdd?

No problem with your way of making partitions?
Did you get rid of them all before you tried to format?

Did you check for a virus on the MBR?
Fdisk /mbr can be used to fix this.

JR
As a wise man once said: To build the house you need the stone.
Back to the Basics!

 

[grossac]

Got rid of every partition and the drive has no special jumpers. Will try to fix mbr but I dont think it's relevant caus every partition has been deleteed. No virus check in bios either. I think maybe the azimuth is out of whack or something. Thx I'll give it a shot

 

[JRBeltman]

Otherwise throw it in the bin

JR
As a wise man once said: To build the house you need the stone.
Back to the Basics!

 

[satrow]

Download the hard disk tools from Maxtor; boot it from the floppy and test. Report back.

Andy.

 

[wolluf]

Just a note - I can't see any mention of it being a Maxtor drive - so would qualify last post - download diagnostic utility from drive manufacturer's website.

 

[satrow]

Thanks for that, wolluf!

Old habits die hard: maxllf used to be a favorite for low-levellig most drives.

Andy.

 

[G939]

Yo grossac what file system are you using,
how many hdds are in the system,
and are they all using the same file system,


using the same file system on both hdds is essential if not this is probably where youre problem lies

 

[Lemon13]

hi @g939,

"using the same file system on both hdds is essential if not this is probably where youre problem lies" - why would that be?

@grossac,
what did the diagtool tell you?

 

[KiloZ]

I agree with Lemon13, the hdds don't need to be of the same format. For instance, my C: is NTFS, yet my D: and E: are FAT32...has never caused a problem.

All great accomplishments were once considered impossible.