This drive came out of a laptop that would post and then leave me with a cursor and that is it. I pulled it and was able to back up users just fine, no issues at all. Below is the MHDD report I got. The one 150 ms block that came up was right at the beginning of the readout, like the first page. I don't know if that caused windows not to boot or what.

Attached is a photo of the report screen. What I'm looking for is to know whether or not to reuse this drive or not being that there was only one colored block in the whole report.

If I should run some other tests on it, let me know what to run.

Thanks,

Dave

use erase waits command. drive looks to be fine.

@Dave48838,
I agree with HDD Spaz that there is no obvious problem shown in that MHDD scan output.

There is one other thing I would do to increase confidence in the drive, which is to read and review the drive's SMART data.

This drive is fine.

I think some virus or other problem caused the OS die.

Sounds like your flashing cursor was a corrupted boot record.

you could perform a fixmbr or fdisk /mbr depending upon what os you had/are putting onto it. The drive looks fine.

Yes, I'm thinking corruption as well, but . . .

My Objective: to reuse this drive

Well, like I said, I did get the user docs and pics via gdb and I imaged it with acronis so now I'm trying to figure out what is going on with this drive. I tried a quick format in windows via usb drive reader, it told me windows is unable to format, tried a regular windows format as well, this went through the entire format process then told me it was unable to format.

Computer management shows the drive, I deleted both partitions, I created one healthy active partition (I can access the drive and change partitions), but for some reason I still can not format the drive

HD Sentinal is showing

Logical Drive D:
Physical Disk(s) 1: WDC WD2500bevs-22usto
status no disk in drive

My Computer is showing d: but not showing the size any more


Vulcan asked about SMART, I have attached a jpg of that as well.

everything is showing healthy, so why am I having problems formatting?

I agree that there is no obvious concern with that SMART data (although as with any "good" test result, this result does not prove that no problem exists ).


No guarantee that I'm correct, but I've got an idea what may be happening in your specific situation. There are several potential ways to try to confirm/deny that hypothesis. Knowing that you've already recovered their data, deleted the customer's partitions and so we can treat this as a blank disk, probably the quickest test for me to describe, is to ask you to create & format a 50GB partition at the start of the disk - is that successful?

You must use exactly the same config and technique for formatting that 50GB partition, which previously "failed" when you tried this before (on what I understand from your info, was 1 partition using the whole disk).

I am going to walk you thorugh step by step of what I did.

Computer Management:

I right click on disk 3, the drive in question, in the unallocated space, 232.88gb. I have the options of new partition, propertys and help. I select new partition. Welcome to the new partition wizard, .... to continue, click next. I click next, select primary partition.

maximum disk space in mb 238473
minimum disk space in mb 8
partition size in mb I entered 50000 and click next

assign the following drive letter I select E: and click next

I select do not format this partition, click next, verify the info

partition type primary partition
dixk selected disk 3
partition size 50000mb
drive letter or path e:
file system none
allocation unite size default

I click next and everything shows up as it should

computer managment shows disk 3 basic 232.88 gb, e: 48.83 and 184.06 gb unallocated

my computer shows local disk e: <-- properties say it's raw.



I could have formatted there, but I'd get the same error as I would formatting it from here.

my computer, I right click on e:, format, I see capacity 48.8 gb, file system ntfs, allocation unit size default, volume lable, I type in wtf and click next.

I get a window popping up formatting local disk (e:)

! windows was unable to complete the format. and there's an ok button underneath.

now if I don't select quick format, it goes through the entire format and tells me the same thing.

The laptop and HD have left my store, when he heard an estimate of my price, he took it elsewhere. He was only the second one in 8 months to go somewhere else after a quote so I'm thinking he didn't really have the money.

I am still curious as to what the reasons would be as to why I couldn't format.

Thanks for explaining - that's not the result I was expecting.

Unfortunately you don't have the specialist equipment which I would use to investigate this type of problem, which is why I tried to think of a test which you could perform, for one hypothesis I had.


Me too, but...


... therefore since you can't gather any further info, or test whether any other suggestion resolves the problem, I don't see how you'll reach a definite conclusion in the investigation.

Thanks so much for letting me pick your brain. I'd like to play with it more as well, but I tried everything I know on it.

Before I did all this, like I said, I backed up all his stuff and imaged the drive. He came in the other day when I was in the middle of trying to reformat his drive, he basically said he wants to take it elsewhere. As of right now his partitions are deleted and I could not format it, that being the case and he didn't want to buy a new drive, I'm kind of wondering if I should now charge him for his data if he wants that back. I'm thinking I can at least get some money out of him. Of course any one else with gdb or r-studio can still recover it, but they would charge as well.

Being that he basically interrupted my work, I wouldn't feel bad charging him minimum $50 for that data. After all, my programs and time aren't free.