SATA drive reports capacity = 0kb

[Swytch63]

Im trying to fix a hard drive of my brothers that is now reporting that the capacity is 0kb. He thinks it might be the result of a power spike or failure. I can get some tools to recognize it, but they cant really do anything to it, I have even tried formatting the disk, which just fails. It was in a Apple Powermac G5. Recovering data would be nice, but my main goal is to just have a working hard rive again.

There doesnt seem to be anything physically wrong with the drive, nothing is brunt on the logic board, and it doesnt make any funny sounds. I think the firmware or MBR somehow got erased and the drive now thinks it is 0kb. I do have a PC i can work from as well. I tried using fdisk, which would see the drive, and noticed that the drive reports it has 0 cylinders, when trying to edit the geometry with fdisk, it just would let the values stick (after saving would just revert back to 0).

does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this drive?
I was thinking flashing the firmware somehow would fix it, but i cant find any information on how i would do this, or where i would find the correct firmware. it is a western digital 250GB SATA drive model WD2500JD-00GBB0.

the only other idea i thought of was editing or replacing the MBR, but im not sure what tool would be best for this, or exactly what sectors i would edit.

any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Swytch

 

[G0AOZ]

I haven't looked on the Western Digital website, but I expect they will have some hard disk diagnostic software somewhere for testing that drive. This is often run from a floppy drive after booting up with a DOS disk.

If the drive is still under warranty, make a note of any error messages after running the diags, and contact the manufacturer.

To replace the MBR (Master Boot Record), boot up with a DOS disk which has FDISK.EXE on it. Then type FDISK /MBR

There's no confirming message, but if the disk's faulty I'd expect an error or I/O response.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[Swytch63]

I have already tried the Western Digital diagnostic software, along with a whole slew of other utilities... It is not under warranty anymore. I already tried replacing the MBR with Fdisk, it just says "writing MBR at offset 0" then immediately goes back to the command prompt.

thank you for your response.

 

[G0AOZ]

So the drive is being recognised in the BIOS... What does that show as its capacity?

I had a SATA drive a while back which wouldn't play nicely until I set the drive jumper back to SATA-1 to match the particular motherboard interface in question. As I recall, by default the drive was un-jumpered, setting it as a SATA-2 device.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[Swytch63]

it shows up as 0 kb in the BIOS...

The only jumper settings information for the drive i have found are turning on and of spread spectrum clocking (which i have tried with the default on and also with it off(no jumper))... ill try to find information on SATA-1 or SATA-2 jumper settings.....

 

[wahnula]

Could be a stuck or broken read head.