I have a co-worker who is a absolute menace when it comes to messing up software. This time I think he's outdone himself. He was trying to reformat a Hard Drive and somehow managed to make it unreadable to the BIOS. I don't think it has been physically abused otherwise. Is there anything that can be done to fix it? Is it really possible to damage a HD from software?

It's not likely you can permanently damage a hard drive with software. There are some low level formatting utilities that are disk specific and if used on the wrong brand hard drive, they could cause permanent physical damage but that probably didn't happen.

You CAN screw up a hard drive so badly with software and file deletions that you would have to format it and reinstall everything to ever get it working properly again.

John

Edit: If he did the wrong kind of LOW LEVEL format, he may have ruined it. He may have just deleted the primary partition and hasn't rebuilt it and formatted it.

Unreadable to the BIOS?
youmean like it can;t see what size and brand it is?
Ot that it says "no bootable partition" or some other message?

If theBIOS can see the brand and size, but there is no partition, you are looking at doing an FDISK and an FDISK /mbr


ennyway...

you now have an expensive door stop.... please send it to me as I have a door that doesn't stay open very well. :D

I tried installing it as a slave in a working computer. On boot, it says something like, "There is a problem with Drive 1, please backup your data and contact Dell about a replacement" Then you can either go to setup or continue.

You can fdisk it, but when you try and format it, it comes up with all kinds of errors, takes hours to complete, and is still unreadable when its done. Does this sound like something fdisk /mbr would fix?

Originally posted by Grandpa Jeep
I tried installing it as a slave in a working computer. On boot, it says something like, "There is a problem with Drive 1, please backup your data and contact Dell about a replacement" Then you can either go to setup or continue.

You can fdisk it, but when you try and format it, it comes up with all kinds of errors, takes hours to complete, and is still unreadable when its done. Does this sound like something fdisk /mbr would fix?

Did you ever resolve this? Just wondering? What system, how old? How big of a drive? Notes about mbr can be found here:mbr (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;69013)


An really OLD program, but one I love, is that silly old Spinrite. It started life in 1988 (!!), but has still saved my rear on a few occasions. No silver bullet, but does the job well as long as you keep to drives (or partitions) under 70 MEG and FAT32 (sorry, won't help on Win2000 or XP with NFTS).

Look at www.grc.com and click on spinrite5. Actually I lost my old version, but recent bought another for the full $89.00... as that web site has also saved me from a few hackers. Glad to send a few $$$ his way. :)

Went to install some BACKUP software this past week. Suspect one of my trusty Maxor drives is dying.... Drive Image 2002 is recommended by lots of folks... but damn, not too friendly if you have problems.

Tom :usa:

I haven't messed with the drive sine I posted this. It's a 5GB drive and it's not that old. I will try the fixing the mbr when I get time to mess with it. Thanks for replying.

if you know the exact brand of the hard drive - do a dogpile.com internet search for that model number. You will find several sites that offer the factory low-level formatting software. Download it to a 3.5 floppy.

Next, put the hard drive into a machine as the primary drive - make sure that the jumpers on the back and the cable position are correct - then insert the factory LL format disk and boot directly to the hard drive on it - it will wipe out everything and restore the factory settings to the hard drive unless it is completely toast.

Now, you can do a regular format to restore the boot sectors. Sometimes I will do this with an old DOS boot disk. It will format the drive so that bios will read it and then you can either reformat it with a more modern operationg system or just install whatever you are using.

I have brought some really trashed HD's back to life this way.

Cool, I'll try that. It's a Maxtor, so it shouldn't be too tough to find.

here's the link to the program you need then - Powermax (http://maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm)

Originally posted by Mo
you now have an expensive door stop.... please send it to me as I have a door that doesn't stay open very well. :D

Is that the e-bay door to your basement? :flipoff2: