Hi team,

This is my first post and it's about the HDD low level formatting tool.

I have WD3200AAJB Caviar (PATA) drive that was just sitting around I used a Linux partition tool to delete primary and extended partitions on the drive. However, I must have deleted something primary like boot sector information, the MFT or something because the disk was not recognized after that.

So I used the HDDGuru format tool and it reported that it completed the formatting but I still can't get any of the motherboards I have to recognize the drive...!?!?

I feel like I missed a crucial step but I am not sure what!

Any ideas on how to bring this disk back to life!?!

jla

If the motherboard doesn't recognize the drive, how did you run the format tool?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

What exactly do you mean by "not recognized"? There are several places where you could be looking for the drive to be "recognised" (BIOS, Windows "My Computer", Windows "Device Manager" etc. etc.) and each of the results means something different

From what you have said, there was a problem before you ran the LLF tool, and the current situation isn't as a result of using the LLF tool - it's just that using that program didn't change whatever the original problem was... That's why it's important to get a clearer "problem definition" of the original problem IMHO.

@drc - agreed, that's exactly the sort of apparent contradiction caused by the current problem description that's been supplied by the OP

It sounds like the data isn't showing up now because the partitions where deleted...when you delete the partition you are deleting the boot sector for that partition (if it is the boot partition)

LLF literally nuked all of the data on that drive. It is now gone forever.


Go into bios and navigate to wherever the storage setup is, you should be able to see: WD3200 so on and so forth

Thanks for your responses. I will be clearer next time.

To clarify...

a. To start with the disk in questioned worked perfectly. At this time it was not my main disk.
I used it first in my home computer then later in a USB adapter case that converted it to offline storage.

b. When I deleted the partitions, it was still in the USB case and it was recognized as USB mass storage by the bios and as a WD Drive by the Ubuntu 10.10 Disk utility.

c. The problem came when I deleted the partitions using the Ubuntu utility. Please note, that I am not expecting to recover data here. I don't know how you got that idea. I am very familiar with partitioning as such. But, when I decided to delete the main windows partition, the disk was segmented with "unused" or "unrecognized" areas before and after the partition. To make the disk one large continuous resource, I deleted everything on the disk so that the "unused" space was the same as disk capacity. That's what, I think got me in trouble. I think that had I left tiny partition at the beginning of the disk, I wouldn't need to post here, but of course, I am not sure of that. I think the disk may have been formatted at the factory with a utility that left setup or instantiation data on the disk.

d. After partition removal, the disk is not recognized by either the bios as a regular hard disk or in it's USB case as a "mass storage" device. That's why I decided to start with the LLF utility. But even after a successful run of that I am in the same situation. So far no luck. Does this make things clearer? Again thanks for all the feedback.

JLA

Thanks - it would have helped to know the full story at the beginning...

I don't have much time to assist with remote support, but I'll give you some comments in the hope that they help.

First - as I said before and I'll say it again: this situation is nothing to do with the LLF Tool. In your extra details, you've confirmed that your disk drive was "not recognised" [see below] after the "partition removal" that you did, which was before you ran LLF Tool.


So please, stop wasting your time focussing on LLF Tool. Unless you've invented time travel, such that LLF Tool can affect behaviour before it is run, then you have already said that your problem existed before you did that

Second - due to the variables which you've got (Windows vs. Ubuntu; PATA attach vs. USB enclosure; no details of how you're booting / choosing either OS) and without knowing which setup you have right now, it's impossible for me to suggest data collection which would apply to your current config, since I don't know which of the 4 possibilities you currently have setup (i.e. no use giving instructions for Windows if you're now running Ubuntu etc.).

The output of dmesg from Linux with the disk attached via PATA would show you whether the disk itself is being recognised (e.g. /dev/hda - but it could be hdb etc.) even though there will be no listed logical drives (e.g. /dev/hda1). That is where I would start, but there are several approaches which could be used.


With a normal direct-attached PATA drive, which will therefore be reported directly by the BIOS in normal motherboards (unless you've got a very non-standard config), then simply deleting any partitions, on its own, will not remove that disk from the "storage setup" screen (or whatever it is called on your BIOS) where the detected disk drives are listed. That is because the BIOS does not read (or care about) partitions at that point (it just uses ATA Identify Device, and sometimes Set Features, commands to identify and report the disk model in the setup screen). (Other parts of the BIOS, e.g. hibernation settings, may care about partitions, but we're not talking about that.)

Perhaps your BIOS setup was not configured to list the drive even before the partitions were deleted (e.g. the storage setup was "IDE = none" or similar)? So then when you checked the BIOS after deleting the partions, the disk still wasn't reported there - but that has nothing to do with deleting the partitions...

Third - you wouldn't be able to run LLF Tool if Windows didn't believe that the disk existed! (as drc pointed out)

How do you explain that you're saying the disk is not "recognised" (in the ways that you describe), yet you were able to run LLF Tool, and hence Windows was able to detect and report that disk's existance via its APIs to LLF Tool - i.e. Windows does "recognise" it? Therefore we've got some contradictions here - the situation cannot be exactly as you've described it IMHO, although I'm sure you're doing your best to explain things.

I'd probably start by using PATA attach, finding out how to remove any concerns about the disk not being shown in the BIOS setup (which may be another BIOS setting, as I explain above), since that cannot be the result of deleting partitions - and then move forwards from there - but it's up to you