I have acquired (bought used) a Western Digital HD branded by Dell.

Elsewhere I have seen that there could be problems setting it up and I had a little experience once with an HD swap on a Dell myself.

Are there any known problems with a WD model

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB,Internal,7200 RPM,3.5" (WD5000AAKS) Hard Drive #221320323285

that is branded by Dell to take a format for XP in NTFS?

Any best practices to prep for the installation?
I am new to the forum and do not work in the tech field.

I have run Crystal Disk Info on this Dell branded WD drive. CDI gives it a "Good" rating, the the hours are below 3000 and I have download the last of the ISO- released Data Life Guard Tools for Western Digital.

There is nothing on the drive. It is recognized by Crystal Disk, SMART etc only.

I will run Data Life Guard tools to see if it comes up with any news but my question here is : If I run the Zero-fill, does Data Life Guard automatically find bad spots and program around them as does chkdsk in Window XP?

If this thread is somehow in the wrong place please advise.

Thanks for the replies. What is MHDD?

As I said the initial disk report was a "Good." but when trying to use a trusted Ghost cd the operation stalled and I had to terminate the process. There error in Ghost was it was trying to Restore-- can't remember) and this totally stalled out the program have progress of one or two percent over a couple hours. Completions time just kept going up and write speed went down to 7.

Terminating a program usually makes for MBR errors but I had no choice. Right now I'm trying some things to get the thing going again after the failure of Ghost to work right.

Bad dll elements were reported and I moved those one at a time from a good HD system 32 folder to this questionable one.

The drive has not had many hours on it. I wonder if it made problems which were intermittent and so the seller ditched it?

If so what is the professional advice for a good clone program when or if the WD we are talking about shows a good boot?

Right now I'm getting a newer ISO version of Clonezilla which I only used briefly years ago.

To prepare the drive for whatever comes next I am running an XP repair install which seems to be loading the OS in.

Earlier today I could not even get the WD cd drive to load b/c POST found these assorted problems with the HD.

Ok, well that''s enough from me. I will report on the bootability of this drive after the current repair operation. Then I request referral to a good clone program which may be more up to date. I will also say if I could run the WD utils disk now.

Alright I'll let you know when I have the info.

Trying a repair install seemed to complete but then hung up at the 'black screen with arrow' after Windows XP splash screen.

I'm going to see if WD utils will load now.

I ran WD utils two ways:

1.) refreshed the MBR in WD utils which it said went ok

2.) And in WD Diagnostics did a full scan which it reported had errors and those errors were now fixed.

This was after I did a repair routine from the XP disk onto the drive.

The result was that the same XP splash screen displayed and the black 'arrow' screen once again froze. I don't think that I'm not waiting long enough or something-- it seems to be a real problem.

I have made the cd for MHDD and will run that tomorrow.

I am ready to proceed with MHDD. Got as far as the help screen and then reviewed how to scan from above.

I looked at the help page and maybe it will make more sense now.

I contacted the seller and what follows is a summary of our chat about this drive.

[... had a chat yesterday and he seems very helpful and would do an exchange. Even gave some tips pm setting up dynamic-- dynamic what? would have to be something in the BIOS and a recommended MBR refresh prog I did not know of.

I had some questions about this setting dynamic business so it's going a step at a time. I did suggest that he extend the 14 day return period.

The seller told me that no industrial strength data removal program was used and that it was simply formatted in Vista (ntfs I suppose ) checked in Hard Disk Sentinel. I asked in a roundabout way why a drive with few hours on it went to auction.

Another weird problem is going on. I moved the drive to the media setup where I can do all the swaps. In both machines XP starts up but hangs. This morning the OS started up with a blank screen and those little bars across the bottom-- got about half way to completion as the bars fill in and then reset completely beginning the boot cycle again.]


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How can I get the text report of whatever MHDD finds? It's running from cd drive.

I'll see if I can find scan and start that now.

Another program with limited help and screen prompts of any use.

I selected scan
Screen says Init drive
Scan...
and a blue box.

Enter to select the defaults
blue box says Start LBA

nothing happens or shows progress.

Please give complete instructions. The scan program should be going but is not because I was not told some key to press.

As stated the Start LBA box is visible but empty.

At top of screen DRSC and DRDY are visible.


Nothing is happening. I'll have to restart this when someone gives the whole instruction to make a scan work. I may be able to review the manual myself but this is becoming very slow to do.

this may be the best advice.

I will run MHDD once more: scan, then F4 This is like I've failed at something. Anything shiny should still work.

Also I get no replies when posted to my email and I have the box ticked.

The scan is going now and on the problem drive.

No messing with the LBA screen.

How do I make a report for you?

Coming up to the end of the scan here-- this was a long wait. I don't know what I'm looking for to get smart attributes but how can I get them printed to you?

Ok I pressed F8 at end of scan, The smart data appears and says saved LOG\smart.log.

On a drive that's not working I don't know if I can find it. Right now I'm going to review your messages and see if I can pick out the right stuff.

Will try to get the log file to you as a what? attachment or convert to text and post here?

None of this is real clear.

ok.

The LOG\smart.log is on the problem WD drive someplace.

Say the drive is E: what is the code to get it? E:\LOG\smart.log

How am I going to get that as a file? Confused.

I used the usual search directory tool in XP on the E: drive-- cannot see any folder called LOG in root. Advise how to get to it. Would for some reason the LOG file be saved to the C: drive?

Well, back tomorrow.

Other observations. The WD drive runs quiet and the disk seems to have taken one of my attempts to clone/get all the information to it. Yet it won't boot up.

The seller told me about some MBR program which is trialware called EaseUS as being good for this job. Do the Gurus have any experience with that?

Also what means to change the HD to Dynamic? Are these BIOS settings?

I feel I have made some progress. I'd rather not give this drive up if it can be put in good shape.

I will to search .log only and see if XP recognizes .log as a file type.

Other thing I thought of to dodge the bootup problem on the WD was to pad the Windows folder in order to write the info slightly differently. Once opening the XP folder I saw a stray media file in there that was copied in error. That would have changed the areas where the XP code is written to.

It is just an idea.

For SMART data, can I post it from another prog such as CrystalDiskInfo etc?

Then, what is the next step in using MHDD? It seems to have a lot of functions.

I have given up on this one.

My attempt to clone with Acronis gave "cannot write to Sector 2" twice in a row.
The drive is defective and that's why it couldn't write past the splash screen of XP.

I will defintely keep HDD Guru for the future. You have been patient and informative.

What are some of the other things that MHDD can do or is there a decent manual for it? What makes it different from other manufacturer supplied utilities?

I've come back in here on a related question on MHDD and HDD Oracle since the site management seems to be the same. I used the link above for HDD Oracle and looked at the manual but could not get registered at the site. Overnight I got no email confirmation of my registration.

HDD Oracle looks to be new within this year and the MHDD discussion is very brief but should grow.

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Finally before closing this thread, is there a reason you know of that Microsoft Vista doing a NTFS format routine would cause a drive in XP to see it as having to be "rewritten"? That's what happened with this Dell branded Western Digital in the thread. Chkdsk looked at it and decided to "restore" the whole volume. Restore may not be the exact word. I forgot since it was flying by so fast. But the process took well over one hour and appeared to be examining the whole hard disk.

Chkdsk doesnt format.

chkdsk shouldn't do anything to the drive unless you specify the /f switch, meaning "fix"

chkdsk searches for crosslinked files and other filesystem record errors and attempts to fix them, if it cant it will write the data of the files to a folder.

Vista? i would get rid of that very quickly for win7

Yes, /r/f was specified and then the rewrite job started.

My OS is XP I never wanted to change that. We are talking about a format performed before I received it. Then XP went through all this rewriting routine.

I sent the drive back to the ebay seller. What kind of satisfaction I get is unknown.

Yes, /r/f was specified and then the rewrite job started.

My OS is XP I never wanted to change that. We are talking about a format performed before I received it. Then XP went through all this rewriting routine.

I sent the drive back to the ebay seller. What kind of satisfaction I get is unknown.