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Drive won't format...

T

tuffgong

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 19, 2005
Messages
1,696
Just bought a Seagate 200GB HD and when I try to format it, either from WINXP setup, Partition Magic or Acronis it just hangs.

It does about 1 percent every 2-3 minute then just freezes. I have even tried putting my old hard drive in and formatting from windows and no luck.

what's the deal?
 
Check cables, and run manufacturer diagnostics, and post back what you find.
 
cables seem fine...have triple checked.

when i run the seagate tools from dos, they dont work properly...the drive is detected fine in bios. it partitions properly also, it just wont format.

i'll have to wait till i get home to run the diagnostics again
 
I ran SeaGate tools and it reported that the drive has commited a SMART error and is likely to fail at any time and that it should be replaced...

Dude I just installed this thing for the first time...WTF???

Looks like an RMA...I changed it from Cable Select to Slave BTW.
 
This stuff happens... I have had a similar prob with one of my drives I got like 5 months ago and I sitll haven't gotten it to format.

I closely inspected it the toherday and saw that one of the pins solder points was broken...

Just be glad you are RMA'in it now instead of it crashing on you with all its data.
 
Ya I guess I'm lucky it happened before the 5-year warranty expired (no I'm not being Sarcastic).

One last thing...I want to make sure it's completely blank before I RMA it. Does deleting all of its partitions ensure this?
 
nope just removes the pointers to the metadata
youd need to overwrite the data to ensure its secure
and several times too
though once is enough to defeat most reasonable recovery

without overwriting the data any direct scan can recover whats there


failing a drive fitness test isnt a defacto indicator of a bad drive
it could still be your memory
your cable
your mobo channel
your busmaster drivers

if you can get another HDD to pass on the same channel with the same cable, memory and busmaster driver

thats a good indicator ;)

but any time I have an issue like that I first check the jumpers and cables
then run memtest86+ and then ATACT both will run till stopped

see > http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=761272
specifically > http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1026812385&postcount=6
 
Other HD's worked fine on same cable...I even tried the drive with diff mother boards and same ^&*$.

I even tried writing zeros and that was going to take 12 hours so I cancelled. I sure wish Outpost would let me return this in store but that's not going to happen...time to start a FedEx account :(
 
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