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Hard Drive Eludes Formatting

954 views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  brobarapas 
#1 ·
Hey there, I can use some...a lot of help. Y'see, there was a point in my hard drive's lifespan in which it became self aware. I used to have Windows installed on it, ranging from XP to Vista to 7. It lasted me a while before starting to lock up my system, BSoDing, and finally even freezing at post. Luckily, I had another hard drive on hand, installed Windows on that and everything was fine. I later assured myself it was the hard drive by plugging it in again to see if anything would happen...sure enough, it would freeze. The obvious choice was to try and format it, thinking maybe something on it became so corrupt that it's making these things happen. Guess what? This hard drive will not allow formatting. I'm not saying it gives me an error or aynthing but...When it doesn't freeze at post, I'll go ahead and put my Windows 7 disc in and try to format from there since having it plugged in will not let me into my OS even if it's on the other drive. The Windows setup starts up fine until it has to start searching for drives. It will look and look and look for an eternity. Out of curiosity, I unplugged the drive as it was looking and sure enough it found my good drive. So it dodged the bullet there...I then decided to boot up to Windows and then plug in the bad drive when I'm all booted up. It didn't freeze or anything, and the drive was even detected. Good stuff so far except...When you go into "Computer" and try to access the drive, it isn't there. Okay, so I just refresh and have Windows see if there's any more drives...Guess what? It loads and loads and loads and loads, all the while the rest of Windows is fine. I even go into Device Manager and see that the hard drive is present. I downloaded a program called Killdisk in hopes that it would be able to detect but nope, same thing, refreshes forever. This frikkin thing is seriously does not want to be formatted and is driving me nuts. Any genius ideas to get this thing formatted? Maybe I'll have to beat it at Chess or into submission, whatever the case may be, I need your suggestions. Thank you!
 
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#2 ·
If a drive cannot be formatted that is a good indication that it is bad and needs to be replaced. If Killdisk doesn't work with the drive this would serve as further confirmation. Hard drives do fail, often without warning or apparent cause.

You could test the drive with Seatools or the utility provide by the manufacturer. But there seems little doubt that the drive is bad.
 
#4 ·
If a drive cannot be formatted that is a good indication that it is bad and needs to be replaced. If Killdisk doesn't work with the drive this would serve as further confirmation. Hard drives do fail, often without warning or apparent cause.

You could test the drive with Seatools or the utility provide by the manufacturer. But there seems little doubt that the drive is bad.
In order for program to work, the hard drive would have to let it detect it. While it is indeed detected and very much there, programs are caused to loop when it tries to access it in anyway. So I doubt Seatools would work. So you think this is more of a physical issue? I was hoping there would be someway to override its stubbornness.

Wow all that and no mention of make and model of hard drive ?

1. Remove the hard drive pcb you need a small torx most likely #8 or 9 clean head contacts with a pencil eraser then re-assemble

2. If WD or Seagate download diagnostics Attempt to test drive. By the way this is just to confirm the drive health
I don't see how that would matter, I figured I'd only be told to get the PCB replaced with the same model but I already know that as an option (even if it's kind of a bad one). The fact is, it's a hard drive and it's acting up. As for your suggestions

1. The head contacts being where the plugs go into (the gold bits)? Never heard of cleaning it with a pencil eraser, people have said to use alcohol but not sure how well that'd work out. I can give it a try.

2. It's a Seagate but as I mentioned, the hard drive is stubborn and won't let any programs gain access to it, so I can't see how even a diagnostic could work. It is an option that I could try, but it's not looking good.
 
#3 ·
Wow all that and no mention of make and model of hard drive ?

1. Remove the hard drive pcb you need a small torx most likely #8 or 9 clean head contacts with a pencil eraser then re-assemble

2. If WD or Seagate download diagnostics Attempt to test drive. By the way this is just to confirm the drive health
 
#7 ·
I think this drive is dead and not worth working on it anymore. If it is less then 3 years old, you can send it back to Seagate, after running Seatools and get a free Refurbished drive in about 6-8 weeks.
You can download the ISO image for Seatools in my signature and burn the image to CD using IMGBurn also in my signature. Boot off of the CD and run the Quick and Advanced tests on the drive. Since it's not booting from the current HDD but from the CD it would have a better chance of running the tests.
 
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