NEC Hard Drive Problem - Need To Low Level

[Guest_imported]

Hello,

I have an NEC D3745 Hard Drive with the following specs:
2096 cyl, 16 heads, 63 sec/t, 1081.7 MB
I have had trouble with this drive in that it is in operable condition (hardware is ok) but the information as given above is incorrect when using software tools to find out the info on the drive... in other words it gives a different number for the number of cyclinders, etc.
Is there a low level formatting program i can use to correct this situation... any help is appreciated.

Many thanx,
PK

 

[compuser]

I too would like to find a good Low Level format utility!!

 

[dakota81]

Does the software tools you are running display the correct size? Does it half the number of cylinders and double the heads? Or maybe quarter the cylinders and quadrouple the heads? This is quite normal and is perfectly okay to do. And in reality, you don't even need to set up the drive with the correct number of cylinders or heads in the bios setup, just as long as the sectors per track is correct (this was commonly done with systems ten or fifteen years ago, before we could manually set the drive parameters).

I don't remember the exact number, but the original ide specifications only allowed for a total of like 512 cylinders (again, this number is most likely incorrect, but you get the idea). The way around this to achieve larger capacity harddrives was to fool the bios by dividing the number of cylinders by a certain number then multiplying the heads by that same number. Ends up with the same capacity and the drive works like a charm. Then it wasn't until around 550meg capacities where ide had to be revised again and became eide.

So is this the case with the numbers you are reading with your drive? If so, don't worry about it, everything is fine.

 

[xscape]

Dang, that guy knows his stuff.

 

[blubeast]

Composer ... do a search for the maxtor low level format program .... don't remember where mine came from but it is indespensable ..... if you think the hard drive is going bad I would recommend a program called spinrite5 from grc.com, it's a little expensive but well worth every penny .. hope this helps