KILLED HARD DRIVES

[daanne23]

i BOUGHT 280 MAXTOR HARD DRIVES FROM AN AUCTION. NONE OF THE DRIVES COULD BE TESTED IN BIOS USING DST. I HAVE TRIED PQMAGIC AND SEATOOL (FROM SEAGATE)AND STILL CAN NOT FORMAT OR PARTITION ANY OF THE DRIVES. THE BIOS AND TEST UTILITIES SEE MOST OF THESE DRIVES AND RECORD THEIR FIRMWARE, S/N, MAKE. THE CAPACITY IS REPORTED WRONGLY. SOME 40GB REPORT 41.8GB OR 8.5GB. WINDOWS XP CAN NOT SEE THESE DRIVES. I AM THINKING THE DRIVES WERE KILLED (WIPED) WITH SPECIAL UTILITIES.
IS THERE ANY HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS ON HOW I CAN RECOVER THESE DRIVES?

 

[wahnula]

daanne23,

Welcome to the forum. Please turn off Caps Lock for future postings, it's considered in the forum world as "SHOUTING".

Now for the drives: When you say Win XP cannot see the drives, is this in disk Management in the Management Console?

If not go there (right-click My Computer==>Manage==>Disk Management) and see what you can see.

DBAN is an effective drive-killing tool that will remove any special encoding:

http://www.dban.org/

Try running it on one drive and then formatting to see if the drive is usable.


Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[daanne23]

I tried the DBAN as suggested by Wahnula without success. My problem is to be able to format these hard drives.

 

[wahnula]

Well, then here's another one to try:

http://www.killdisk.com/

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[wahnula]

Heck, download the Ultimate Boot CD:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It has a suite of drive-killing apps including the two above. If they can't do it, nothing can.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[shoalcreek]

I think MISTER ALLCAPS here is trying to make the drives usable again. If Seatools won't help, I don't know what will. Did you try calling them? Seagate has a five-year warranty. They won't ask for proof of purchase--they will ask for your serial number.

It sounds like your big mistake was buying hardware at an auction, MISTER ALLCAPS.

 

[wahnula]

It sounds like your big mistake was buying hardware at an auction, MISTER ALLCAPS.

Now now shoalcreek...be nice. daanne23 stopped using all caps after I notified them it's not proper Internet etiquette. Knowing the intended uses for the drives would be a plus though.

And you don't need to call Seagate...they have a Warranty Checker that checks the serial number online to see if the warranty is still in effect.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Michael52x]

Has the MBR been re-written? Disc-Go has a utility to fix this. You may have just missed a step. When they erase a factory overlay, it messes the MBR up. Try using the PCB from a known good drive on one of them.

"Impatience will reward you with dissatisfaction" RMS Cosmics'97

 

[daanne23]

Thanks for all your replies. Though the problem has not been solved by any of the suggestions, I hope the ALL CAPS attracted your urgent attention.

 

[G0AOZ]

I hope the ALL CAPS attracted your urgent attention...". Don't bank on it the next...

Have you tried running MHDD on one of these drives? It's a free utility, and might give some results...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[BadBigBen]

the symptoms you describe, wrong size, etc., can boil down to a few things:

1. bad or loose IDE cables...
2. flaky IDE controller (shorted IDE controller, ergo something stuck in the back of the mainboard, like a screw)...
3. ESD damage on the PCB of these drives... or the drives where erased using a degaussing mechanism...
4. BIOS problem (mainboard) or Firmware messed up (HDD)...

I had similar problems with a WD400 that would get recognized once in a blue moon as a WD500 etc., turns out that the BIOS did not like the drive, once I moved it to a PCI IDE controller, I never had any problems with it again...

so my suggestion, get a cheap PCI adapter (Promise FastTrak 133 or 66) and try it on them...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[daanne23]

Hi

BadBigBen

Thanks for your response.

 

[PRPhx]

Also, how old are thesse drives?? Are you SURE your trying to use them with the appropiate drive technology (i.e. SATA, IDE, etc)?

 

[daanne23]

Application backup
I have a custom made application package installed in my pc. I lost the original disks containing the package. What software or utility can I use to extract the installed package without backing up the entire disk and OS?

Thanks

 

[G0AOZ]

Might've been better to start a new thread on this one...

If it's an application package which used an Installer, I doubt that you can lift it off and use it elsewhere. I assume you want to install it on a another machine now?

If it's running on the original hard disk, then all you could do is make a clone of that disk and try and getting it running on another computer.

ROGER - G0AOZ.