Hard Drive won't format

[waheed]

I have a secondary SATA hard drive (Western Digital Carvier 250 GB model:WD2500KS) which im trying to format.

Initially, the hard drive crashed on me and I would get no response and made the mistake of disconnecting the hard drive from the PC. Fromn this point on, the drive is recognised by the PC, but I could no longer access it. I kept getting the error stating the drive is not formatted, do you wish to format it now.

However, I cant even format the hard rive and it just hangs.

I've even tried to format the drive using Computer Management under control panel and even as far as deleting the partition and creating a new partition as NTFS. Then the format procedure begins and it just hangs.

I left the hard drive on all night to see if it will format, but woke up to see an error stating that format cannot be completed.

Ive even tried all of the above steps on a different PC but still no luck.

Any solutions.

[DB83]

Depends on what you mean by 'crashed'

This happened to me during a virus scan and it could not be read. It went through the 'format' proceedure but there was still no live disk.

Chances are that the disk has failed and all you can then do is remove and replace it.

You could download the WD diagnostic software but I would not expect any good news.

[bendixG15]

Misread Sorry

[TBoneit]

As DB83 stated go to http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=3 and download the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows and run the diagnostics. If the drive passes the diagnostics then I would try writing zeros to the drive, partitioning and formatting. My guess is that it will fail the diagnostics in which case time to move on.

Good Luck

[JohnnyBob]

Here's a couple of possibilities to try...

Windows Explorer, rightclick the drive and select Properties, Tools tab, under Error Checking click Check Now, etc. See if it will run the error check and, if so, set it to fix any errors it finds.

and/or

If it's a slave drive, make sure the jumper is set for slave.
Reseat the power and SATA connection cables at both ends.
Goto Control Panel, System, Hardware tab, click Device Manager, expand Disk Drives, rightclick the drive, and uninstall it.
Restart your computer.
The drive should be recognized and reinstalled automatically.
Goto Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management.
Delete all partitions on the drive, then try to format it again. Presumably it was formatted in NTFS already, so a "quick format" should be sufficient.

You can also read the review here by "mission on 3/12/2008" which mentions how to format it...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144701

[waheed]

ive downloaded the WD Diagnostics and It wont even run. I keep getting the following error:

"Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete!
Status code=07 (Failed read test element). Failure checkpoint = 65 (Error Log Test)
SMART self-test did not complete on drive 2!"

@JonnyBob

Already gone through that stage but still no luck.

[aedipuss]

try a s.m.a.r.t. hard drive program. it may identify the error. google for diskcheckup.exe

it's free for personal use.

[aedipuss]

sounds like a bearing failure. put your hand on it while turning on the computer and see if it starts up.

[Constant Gardener]

Check the power! I had a Maxtor SATA disc doing weird things, claiming one partition wasn't formatted. Eventually I replaced the SATA power cable. End of problem.

[DarrellS]

I had two SATA drives that did the same thing when I installed an IDE controller card. I had a Tech guy get one drive working but he had to erase all the data.

I tried both Maxblast 4 and WD Data Lifegaurd Tools but neither program would do any good.

I downloaded a program called GetDataBack and was able to recover the data off of the drive then used a program called Kill Disk to write zeros to the disk and was able to get the drive working again.

You may have already lost the data by trying to reformat but it might be worth a try.

[lenti_75]

that's a dead drive