The 00 hex to the disk I use Norton Diskeditor, I wonder if I downloaded Norton Utilities version 5 or something. I feel I have full control with that program, even if it looks like I have no control at all
I have asked for help another place too, so I might have ended up thinking I told about the first ST3144. I bought one first, it did not work, same issues as with this one. Then I bought another ST3144A, which acted up like the first one, and then I broke the power connector off the first one, so it is currently off duty until I get it fixed.
And then the third disk ST3391A I bought now recently and I have hidden so no cables is getting too close to it.
So, two different controllers, two different hard disks, 3-4 cables, lost count. But more than two. Both 80 wire cables, and 40 wire cables.
I have maybe 3 times reloaded defaults to the bios, both versions, auto detected the drive, booted, partitioned it, formatted it... and every time I have made sure the drive has only 00 hex in it, from sector 0 to the last one. And every time Fdisk partition it with 935 cylinders, unless I set landing zone to cylinder 1002 instead of 1001, then Fdisk partition it to 936 cylinders. And every time the disk gets garbled up.
From what I understand, older USB to IDE adapters tend to accept older IDE drives, but I have yet to see one that goes all the way back to PIO 0. The disk motor does not spin up. Take out the adapter plug, and the drive spins up, put it back in, and it stops.
The memtest, I downloaded it two times, the older version, and my Win 8.1 computer says the file is damaged. Is there another memtest ?
Bill