I have two identically drives WD1200JD-00GBB0 with this strange behaviour mentioned in topic.
Drive spindle up normally, head positioning OK.
BIOS recognizes HDD at normal name and see full capacity 120GB, windows see the drive also but I can't set any partition, when entering to Partition Magic error message is displaing:
"#100 bad partition table"
and then closing PM

I try to investigate what's going on with Victoria software and is like the following:
Victoria recognizing drive, I see model, serial, fw, cache status etc. seems everything ok, no hangs etc.
First I start default test "read", then scan shows: "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!....." are displaing but very fast so they are not a really bad sectors, I think? This status is on every single sector.
Second I run "write", write process seems to be normal with speed around 53MB/s, but for me to linear.
At last I run "verify", test runs and no errors on display.

Anybody knows what's is wrong with this HDD?? I swaped PCB to check if somebody do it before me, but no positive results.
Thanks in advice.

Sounds like a broken translator module...

I'm no hddguru but have you tried to load other Operating System like Knoppix? Some times that can help....

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"Dum Spiro, Spero"

u need special tools and skills to solve this problem if u dont have them contact a professional .