Some help with Western Digital 250g

[generalluke]

Hi guys some help please?
I have a problem with this drive. I cannot write to it so I deleted the aprtition and tried to format, both long and short formats do not work, they come back with an error saying unable to format at the end of the process.
I tried the hard disk wipe tool and as it starts, it says "write error occured at offset"
Any ideas please?

Thanks
General

Attachments

[qbandit]

Try some software for managing partitions. Not with the OS tool.

[rchadwick]

Try running MHDD. What are the results?

[LaoziSailor]

Hi guys some help please?
I have a problem with this drive. I cannot write to it so I deleted the aprtition and tried to format, both long and short formats do not work, they come back with an error saying unable to format at the end of the process.
I tried the hard disk wipe tool and as it starts, it says "write error occured at offset"
Any ideas please?

Thanks
General

I have exactly the same situation, my drive is 500GB, the program has been running for almost three (3) weeks now on my laptop and I just hope it'll finish despite the error messages. I'm almost at 50% now, not using the laptop so what the heck.

[hddguy]

I have exactly the same situation, my drive is 500GB, the program has been running for almost three (3) weeks now on my laptop and I just hope it'll finish despite the error messages. I'm almost at 50% now, not using the laptop so what the heck.

If you are trying to wipe the disk, then obviously data is not important, and if the disk takes this long to write 00, would you really want to store potentially valuable data on it?

[shahij]

slow sectors i guess

[LaoziSailor]

@hddguy, tx for the comments; you are correct, data is no longer important and as far as "store potentially valuable data on it?" again correct. I am planning to use it as workspace for VHS to DVD conversion.

@shahij, REAL slow -- it's more of an experiment, test of my laptop and whether hddguru would break before completing.

9/3/2008 8:33:22 PM * * * * * WARNING!!! * * * * *
9/3/2008 8:33:22 PM DURING THE LOW LEVEL FORMAT PROCESS
9/3/2008 8:33:22 PM ALL DATA WILL BE FULLY and IRREVERSIBLY ERASED!
9/3/2008 8:33:42 PM
9/3/2008 8:33:42 PM =================================================
9/3/2008 8:33:42 PM Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool 2.36 build 1181; http://hddguru.com
9/3/2008 8:33:42 PM Low level format: WD 5000KS External 101a [500.1 Gbytes]
9/3/2008 8:33:42 PM Device size: 976,773,168 sectors
9/3/2008 8:33:47 PM Format Error occured at offset 17,825,792
9/3/2008 8:33:51 PM Format Error occured at offset 18,350,080
9/3/2008 8:33:55 PM Format Error occured at offset 18,874,368
...
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umpteen thousand lines deleted
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...
10/18/2008 8:17:51 AM Format Error occured at offset 500,106,788,864
10/18/2008 8:17:55 AM Format Error occured at offset 500,107,313,152
10/18/2008 8:17:59 AM Format Error occured at offset 500,107,837,440
10/18/2008 8:17:59 AM Low-level format is done. You will have to create partitions and format this drive.

"You will have to create partitions and format this drive" -- would one use WinXP format or something like PartitionMagic?

Cheers!