WD2500JS - Which Problem Could It Be?

[wshdt3]

Hi - new to the forums and I thank you in advance for whatever help you may offer. I'm trying to figure out what problem I have with my hard drive.

Symptoms:

1. Typical story - perfectly good drive and then one day, hard drive failed. Actually it happened after I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7.
2. No clicking or rattling on power up - it actually sounds like a normal drive.
3. In Disk Management (Windows) - the disk is now listed as "Unknown".
4. When I try to initialize the drive, it prompts me "You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it."
5. I try the MBR and GPT options and I get an error "The system cannot find the file specified".
6. When I look at the properties of the drive - the model is listed correctly - WDC WD2500JS-40SGB0. However, the volumes are listed at 0MB. It should be 250GB.

I don't think it's a read/write head or PCB controller issue. Maybe a firmware issue?

Thanks in advance for the forum's advice.

Thanks,
Woo

[BlackST]

Try on another system : if it works there, revise configuration of your OS.
If it has the same symptoms, the drive has problems and need to be serviced.

[fzabkar]

Does the BIOS show the full capacity for your drive?

Try WD's Data Lifeguard diagnostics:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp