Formatted HardDrive

[Archeon]

I Tried formatting my 2nd HardDrive the other day, being the misguided fool I was I assumed the WinXP Formatting thingie would work fine. So it did its thing, make the funny noises and all that. Finally finishes wiping all the goat&dwarf por... nuuurrr.... letters from various charities thanking me for my donations... yes, that'l do...

*Cough*

Anyway, it finished wiping everything. However afterwards it didn't do the thingie which makes it readable again. So now I essencially have a £30 lump of metal and plastic attached to my PC which I can't use and don't want to touch for fear of the evil that lurks within it.

All I want it for is to hold backup copies of all my important files and such (as well as my charity letters) - can anyone help?


Ta in Advance
Archeon

 

[yaruar]

sounds very odd to me, could be a hardware fault, or the format didn't work, back in the old days I'd reccomend fdisking the bugger and starting again.

Something to check though.

(bearing in mind i'm looking at xp pro here, I've never used xp home and it might be different)
Go into the control panel and click on administrative tools and click on compluter management. There should be a disk management option on the left under the storage option. This should list all the disks present.

One possibility is the MBR doesn't contain any partition information for that disk.

If it's not listing the second disk at all it's most likely shagged though.

 

[Archeon]

Did what you said, it says that its active - and it does still appear in 'My Computer'

Though it doesn't seem to have a 'File System' (whatever the hell that is) - i'm fairly sure it isn't buggered though as I pulled a lot of files from it only my main harddrive before I 'formatted' it.

 

[Iceforge]

Did what you said, it says that its active - and it does still appear in 'My Computer'

Though it doesn't seem to have a 'File System' (whatever the hell that is) - i'm fairly sure it isn't buggered though as I pulled a lot of files from it only my main harddrive before I 'formatted' it.

Sound like you need a FAT16/32 or NTFS setup to the harddisk, have no clue on how to do it, but it might help to know what a "File System" is

 

[yaruar]

Did what you said, it says that its active - and it does still appear in 'My Computer'

Though it doesn't seem to have a 'File System' (whatever the hell that is) - i'm fairly sure it isn't buggered though as I pulled a lot of files from it only my main harddrive before I 'formatted' it.

File system is basically the formatting type. With windows this will be FAT 916 or 32) or more likely NTFS with an xp/2000 intall.
Sounds like it's not taken the format.
Sounds like the mbr isn't there. did you do a quick format or a full format?

I'd definately try formatting it again.

 

[Archeon]

Sound like you need a FAT16/32 or NTFS setup to the harddisk, have no clue on how to do it, but it might help to know what a "File System" is

I've got a vauge idea of what one is - but not idea how to get one on my HD (main HD file system is NTFS btw, if that helps any )

Edit

I'd definately try formatting it again.

Ok, i'll try doing a full format again.

 

[Archeon]

Tried again using default options - no joy, got a msg saying 'Windows was unable to complete for Format'

Maybe it is dud? Bah, I was sure it was working a few days ago as well.

 

[plomien]

when your pc starts up does it recognise the hard drive. if not thats the problem make sur ethat auto detect drive is switched on in the bios.

if that fails remove the master and put the secondary in as the master the using the floppy boot disc you have fdisk the drive this will then set it up correctly. then set it as slave again and reconnect the primary.

 

[Tharion]

Hmm, how did you connect the harddrive?
Is it on the same IDE-cable as HDD1?
If so is it set to slave and HDD1 to master?

hmm after reading your first post a couple of times, I don't really get if its a new HDD, if it have been working, if its a old drive you put in...

 

[yaruar]

Tried again using default options - no joy, got a msg saying 'Windows was unable to complete for Format'

Maybe it is dud? Bah, I was sure it was working a few days ago as well.

Could possibly be that there are corrupt sectors in the mbr. Especially if it's starting the format but failing part way through.

There are things to try, but none of them overly easy. Playing with partitions and different formatting tools possibly.

 

[CjkaceBM]

Find out what make of hard drive it is and then download the manufacturers hard disk tools software.

 

[old.Osy]

Windows cannot read from sector 0

Archeon, you need a capable disk software, like Powerquest's Partition Magic or Acronis Partition Expert. Fdisk alone wont help you. You have a faulty MBR, and that cannot be fixed manually. Forget about recovering files on the hdd, you're way past that step. I would worry about the disk integrity. Good luck.

 

[CjkaceBM]

Do not buy any other software.

If the hard disk is faulty then it will be wasted money.

Find out who manufactured your hard disk and download their disk tools.

Quantum/Maxtor - http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm
Western Digital - http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp
Seagate - http://www.seagate.com/support/index.html
IBM/Hitachi - http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
Samsung - nothing available
Fujitsu - http://www.fujitsu.ca/support/hdd/

If your drive is certified ok then disconnect your primary hard disk, make the second disk master and boot from a Win98 Floppy.

Type fdisk /mbr at the command prompt
Then fdisk your hard drive as normal.
Format

Re-install your main hard disk as Master and your secondary hard disk as slave (or however you have configured it) and then convert the Fat32 partition of drive 2 to NTFS using Windows XP.

 

[legaoniel]

fdisk

bah!

fdisk/mbr