Hi,

My external USB HDD (Hitachi 320 Gb, NTFS) hurt the floor.
After that it made some noises (clac clac) while accessing certain areas of datas.
I tried chkdsk /f : ok with numerous unreadable segment. Then with /r but with numerous errors and anorml ending (non specified error occurred).
I tried HDAT2 from hiren cd but it didn't see the drive (whereas ghost did)

I use then Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool 2.36 build 1181.
It runs for 24 hours now and is only on the first mark of the Current Task progress !!
In the log report i see every 7 minutes : Format Error occured at offset ... with incrementing offset.

With such "speed" it will not end before 10 days ...
Is it normal ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

No, and if you haven't already killed the drive, you are on the right way to destroy the chances of recovering data, as LLF zero fills the drive. As you are trying to erase the drive, data seems not important - replace it.

Whats the idea? The drive is physically damaged, no format will fix it, and there is no such thing as low level format for newer drives, at least not what low level format used to be ( correct me if i am wrong ), if you think that format will remap / mark bad sectors and the drive will be usable again i'm not so sure, at least don't use it for anything of value, the G list can hold so much and after a fall i'm kinda skeptical about the outcome of the whole exercise. The pcb seems o.k. so you can keep the drive as a donor or something or just test all sorts of funny stuff on it like HDD Terminator / Regenerator - that would be a nice "click-click-brrrr" outcome
Anyway HDD's are not so expensive so just buy a new one to be sure and use this for all sorts of testing.

I guess you extracted the hdd from the enclosure/case ? With a lot of luck you may still have a working drive and a busted case...

most probably a busted drive and a working case...

Thanks for your answers.

I already have backup essential data first (unreadable sectors were associated with data less important).

My idea is either mark bad sectors or isolate them or redefine sectors on good area of the disk for the OS never try to access bad sectors.


I read different experiences on net and tried : under xp chkdsk /r (but it ends abnormaly whereas /f is ok), hdat2 or lowformat (from hiren cd or directly) (BUT booting with dos and aspi driver hdat2 or lowformat do not see drive whereas ghost do).

For example, lowformat.exe would be able 1) to detect bad sector 2) isolate them and low format (but don't see my disk !)

HDLLF is the first one i found able to see my usb disk... this day (36 hours after the beginning) the second mark of the task progress appeared.
Any idea other than open disk or put disk in bin ?

Buy a new disk it is a lot cheaper and safer than what you are thinking of doing now. It hit the floor so it is on the way to the grave yard now. If you say you have your most important data trash this one and go on. Get a new disk and start over you are better off

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Iorana Haraharaini