HDD GURU FORUMS

Hi - not sure if this is where to post this, but I am stumped. HDLLF just doesn't see this Maxtor 1TB USB HDD.

My mate accidentally quick formatted his HDD the other day (instead of a flash drive) and has given it to me to "fix". I can't! My file manager/s and Windows 7 HP recognize the drive, Windows picks it up as a new device if I unplug etc., appears to read it normally, scandisks it (no errors) and so on. When I try to format it using various utilities and even a DOS NTFS command line I get errors, or sometimes no errors, the partition is "healthy" but whatever, I can't copy anything onto the drive - at one point I did get a file structure on, and a couple of gigs into one folder, but that was it.

Any suggestions as to how to sort this out or what software I could use to format the drive, isolate any disk errors etc. would be much appreciated.

Robin

[It isn't clear from your post whether you are trying to recover the original data or not - I think you're not trying to recover the original data, since you are trying so hard to format the drive...]

If the only problem with the drive was that it had been mistakenly "quick formatted", then there would be no problems with formatting it again (or trying to read it). Threfore you have some other kind of problem here, and perhaps your "friend" has not told you the whole story.

Remote diagnosis, as you are requesting here, is difficult or impossible when detailed error messages are not given (and may still be impossible even if they are). You can look in the Windows system event log for some more details of problems detected by Windows when trying to use that to format the disk. There is no such thing as a "DOS NTFS command line". I guess perhaps you meant using a Windows command line, to run the format utility - but perhaps you meant something else.

One easy thing you can try doing, is using another USB cable, in case that is the cause of the problem you are seeing (the specific Windows system event log messages when you try to format the disk may give you a clue about whether this is a USB-related issue, but trying another cable is a cheap / quick elimination you can try.)

A USB-attached disk is more difficult to diagnose, as detailed drive behaviour is hidden from the OS. If your skills / expertise meant that you felt comfortable opening the drive enclosure (losing any warranty in the process), then you could (a) eliminate the enclosure as the source of the problems, and (b) get more detailed error information, by attaching the drive directly via SATA and using utilities like MHDD. However that is not a one click "tell me what's wrong with my drive" utility, and so you would probably need further help to run it and to interpret its results.

You want to "fix" it by formatting or overwriting ?
I've never heard of such a brilliant method.