Format Error occured at offset -----

[madprofessor]

I have a Maxtor 1TB HDD that has been giving me issues. First there's no clicks or any sounds like a dying hard drive. I have tried to format this in Ubuntu, Windows 7 and Windows XP. All three recognize the drive. All three see the partitions however when I try to delete the partitions they each give me an error. Ubuntu is "Daemon is inhibited." And both Windows give me an unspecified error. I tried the HDD Low Level Format Tool in the quick wipe and get the above message on different numbers even though it continues and says it is successful. I then tried the larger wipe and left it overnight. The same thing happened except instead of finishing, the percent was 0% and the MB/s stayed at 0.0. At this point I'm pretty stuck. All I want to do is wipe the partitions and reformat the drive. Any ideas?

[loki]

Hi,

As you have been trying to format the drive so many times under various OS then I guess there is no data on the drive that you need.
If your having issues with the drive then I personally wouldnt continue to use it to store data on knowing it has issues?
Personally I would advise you on getting a replacement drive.

Loki.

[madprofessor]

The drive isn't bad it's just that the partitions are jacked up somehow. This is why I am doing this.

[Vulcan]

The drive isn't bad

I politely disagree - you do not have enough info to be so certain IMHO.

I have tried to format this in Ubuntu, Windows 7 and Windows XP. All three recognize the drive. All three see the partitions however when I try to delete the partitions they each give me an error. Ubuntu is "Daemon is inhibited." And both Windows give me an unspecified error.

A drive which "isn't bad" is unlikely to cause these symptoms! Unfortunately, there is insufficient detail in your comment so far, to get a better diagnosis of how the drive is behaving incorrectly.

If this was my system, I would be reviewing the detailed error logs for the relevant times, on each OS you have mentioned (remember that both Linux & Windows have them), and not just using whatever message is displayed on the GUI, since "unspecified error" is not useful for further diagnosis. I would also collect & review the full SMART data for the drive, and perhaps use a DOS-based drive utility e.g. MHDD - your comments suggest the drive may read successfully, but report errors only when writing, for example. MHDD allows that type of hypothesis to be tested.

Although you say it's a Maxtor-branded drive, I expect that Seagate SeaTools (or whatever is recommended for your specific drive, if different - your drive's model number doesn't seem to be given by you yet), would be a good utility for you to run. Visit Seagate's website and find your drive model in their support section.

I suspect that loki's suggestion will end up being correct, but I have given you some options above to allow you to do further troubleshooting, provided that you remain open-minded to the possibility of your initial statement above being incorrect. Good luck with whatever you decide

[madprofessor]

I will definitely take all these suggestions. Any error code I get I will note and post. Thank you.

[madprofessor]

As a final follow up, I had my friend check it out. He has a Mac and he used the disk utility on that. He said there was a blocked partition but Mac was able to wipe it. He formatted it to hfs+ and I was able to delete the partition in Linux and reformat it to NTFS. The tools mentioned by the previous poster I will definitely download and add it to my arsenal. Thank you.