Help me troubleshoot this Hard drive

[FirehawkNS]

I have a hardrive given to me by a friend to see what is wrong with it and for the life of me I can not get the drive to work. Here is the deal:

The drive all of a sudden stopped booting windows. My buddy gave it too me to plug into my system and diagnose. I plugged them into my system (IDE) and could view the files fine (Win. XP), but I can not delete the files. You delete the files on the drive, and reboot and they are back. Windows XP says there is not a valid format on the drive when you try to install it and will not Partition or format it. Just says error. I have tried:

Windows OS. Format and Partition will not work in Admin tools. Just says error when you reboot and try to partition.

Partition Magic, does the same errors as above when you try to delete partition or format

Windows XP Cd says that it is a NON-DOS partition. It says it deletes the partion when you use that command, it creates a partion, but when you try to format it, it says no valid partion is found.

Windows 98, 98 se, and ME boot disks says that there is no valid drive. When you Fdisk it shows a NonDos partition and will allow you to delete it. When you select create new partition it locks up and just sites at 0% when verifying drive. Reboot and you are back at the beginning.

I figured that the MBR is what is screwed up so I tried "Fdisk /MBR" and it just gives an error on the drive. I then try to Debug MBR and type in the codes manually and it goes through all of them, but gives me different responses then it should when answering codes.

I am burnt out on this. I have tried all I know. I refuse to believe that this drive is just a coster now (until you guys tell me so anyway). Let me know if anyone has any suggestions

Thanks
Nick

[Critofur]

What brand & model is it, is it out of warranty?

[FirehawkNS]

Maxter (yea I know), 52049H3 80Gig

I am guessing it is out of warranty, but don't really know.

Maybe this is the time I need to see what hookups I still have at Circuit City and see if they can sale me a new one and return this one in it's place!! :o

[FirehawkNS]

Ttt Ttt

[Impact9]

Try to low level format the drive or Zero Fill it to totally wipe the drive.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/ata_llfmt_what.html

I know it's a maxtor drive but seagate tools might work.

Try here as well

http://www.bootdisk.com/popfiles.htm

[FirehawkNS]

Thanks. I have tried the seagate tools since I have a seagate drive, but I didn't think about bootdisk.com (other then to get the Win 98/me bootdisk I tried).

[Colt___45]

As previously stated, low level format the sucker and then try. If the drive is still uncooperative after a low level format I'd start looking into the warranty on that drive or look for a replacement drive.

[Falls Included]

newer maxtor often have the waurantee date on the sticker