HDD will NOT format

projectgtr

Hi guys im having a pretty annoying problem with a HDD basically it will NOT format at all ive tried command prompt using DISKPART and tried windows drive utility, it usually gets a bit through the format stage then hangs the whole system then disapears :eek: does anyone have any ideas as to what might be causing this, or have any programs that might help?

Im not sure if this helps but the HDD was an external media player (with a 1.3TB sata drive) the manufacturer said not to format the drive but my neighbours wife plugged it into her Mac and formatted it :mad: the manufacturer said the only way to recover it was to reformat to Fat32 but i found this impossible with the drive size.

Ive tried this on a Mac, a XP system a Win7 system and even using Ubuntu but no joy

Any help would be appreciated

yoyo

My guessing is the Mac may have done something which screwed up some internal firmware which could have bricked certain features of the drive. I'm hoping not, but if even Linux doesn't let you format it it doesn't sound good.
You can format the drive to FAT32 using FAT32 Format btw, it will allow drive still use 1.5TB

Nick

projectgtr

yoyo wrote: »

My guessing is the Mac may have done something which screwed up some internal firmware which could have bricked certain features of the drive. I'm hoping not, but if even Linux doesn't let you format it it doesn't sound good.
You can format the drive to FAT32 using FAT32 Format btw, it will allow drive still use 1.5TB

Nick

Thanks for the reply Nick
yeah im not very hopefull the firmware will survive as its on the drive not the main board :mad: but im trying to save the drive itself, even to have it as a normal external drive or even pull it out alltogether and put it the pc would be great, ill have a look at the link now but i think ive tried that utility , it doesnt need to be FAT32 anymore just once it works

yoyo

projectgtr wrote: »

Thanks for the reply Nick
yeah im not very hopefull the firmware will survive as its on the drive not the main board :mad: but im trying to save the drive itself, even to have it as a normal external drive or even pull it out alltogether and put it the pc would be great, ill have a look at the link now but i think ive tried that utility , it doesnt need to be FAT32 anymore just once it works

What I think is there is something on the controller inside the drive thats screwed up after the Mac botched format. To get the drive going again you may need to get the case open and plug the drive in direct, if its a desktop with SATA ports or get an external caddy

Nick

Nothingbetter2d

put it into a pc and fix the mbr

Fixmbr

Repairs the master boot record of the boot disk. The fixmbr command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console

fixmbr [device_name]

Parameter

device_name

The device (drive) on which you want to write a new master boot record. The name can be obtained from the output of the map command. An example of a device name is:

\Device\HardDisk0.

Example

The following example writes a new master boot record to the device specified:

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0

Note
•

If you do not specify a device_name, a new master boot record will be written to the boot device, which is the drive on which your primary system is loaded.
•

If an invalid or nonstandard partition table signature is detected, you will be prompted whether you want to continue. If you are not having problems accessing your drives, you should not continue. Writing a new master boot record to your system partition could damage your partition tables and cause your partitions to become inaccessible.

note on your xp machine temporarily disconnect your xp's c drive (to avoid accidently formatting the wrong mbr) and plug in the faulty drive.... then using your xp setup disk access the recovery console.

then once done try to create a new partition and format the drive as normal.

Fysh

Have you tried using GParted? It's my preferred solution for creating large FAT32 partitions.