[johnpoiron]

PC is Gateway Laptop circa 2003 running XP professional.

Hard disk is Tohiba MK4021GAS HDD2182 37 GB

I was running a 256MB memory chip at the time the hard disk crashed.
(My 1 GB chip failed and I was waiting on warranty replacement, which I now have)

The cause of the disk crash: My fault. Tried mistakenly to run Microsoft
Security Essentials in less than 1 GB.

I can't format this disk.

I tried thru Windows and format fails.

I tried thru the DOS prompt FORMAT command and the format command fails.
It reports that both boot sectors are un-writeable.

Then I tried DISKPART from the DOS prompt.
I can select the disk.
I successfully ran the CLEAN command.
I was partially successful in creating a partition.
But I could not specify the NTFS file system for XP Professional.
And I could not assign a label.

I can select a partition.

I can select a volume.

I can view the details of each. The file system fields are always blank.

But the FORMAT command within DISKPART does not run successfully
when a volume is selected or when a partition is selected.

Can anyone advise me how to save this disk? I am on a limited budget.
Before my mistake with MSE, this disk was running perfectly. The disk has been
pronounced "Healthy" by CHKDSK and DISKPART and by Windows.

Many thanks.
John

[mjd420nova]

One approach that will offer success where other angles didn't You first have to boot yo a CD/DVD and run the partition manager. DELETE every partitiion you can find. First delete the extended partitions, often asssigned other drive names D:, E:, etc. Then the main C: partition. Reboot back to the CD and enter the manager to be sure the partitions are all gone. Now you can allocate a new partition, activate it and boot back to the CD and see if WIN? can now find and format the whole drive. Some viruses I've seen will allocate their own partition and hide the worm there with password protection. Having a full back up or up to date incremental backups can save many headaches and make a restore a snap.

[johnpoiron]

mjd420nova, on 20 November 2012 - 07:28 PM, said:

One approach that will offer success where other angles didn't You first have to boot yo a CD/DVD and run the partition manager. DELETE every partitiion you can find. First delete the extended partitions, often asssigned other drive names D:, E:, etc. Then the main C: partition. Reboot back to the CD and enter the manager to be sure the partitions are all gone. Now you can allocate a new partition, activate it and boot back to the CD and see if WIN? can now find and format the whole drive. Some viruses I've seen will allocate their own partition and hide the worm there with password protection. Having a full back up or up to date incremental backups can save many headaches and make a restore a snap.

Thanks for getting back to me.

I'll try your suggestion. I've nothing to lose now. The disk is scrap.
I tried a low level format utility from HDD Gurus. The utility was unable to finish. It
aborted at about 4% completion.

[LiveBrianD]

Try running Seatools on it. That said, it sounds like the disk itself is dying. I had one that did this before (I could only do a quick format, not a full one), and was full of bad sectors.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 21 November 2012 - 07:07 PM

[mjd420nova]

johnpoiron, on 21 November 2012 - 06:41 PM, said:

mjd420nova, on 20 November 2012 - 07:28 PM, said:

One approach that will offer success where other angles didn't You first have to boot yo a CD/DVD and run the partition manager. DELETE every partitiion you can find. First delete the extended partitions, often asssigned other drive names D:, E:, etc. Then the main C: partition. Reboot back to the CD and enter the manager to be sure the partitions are all gone. Now you can allocate a new partition, activate it and boot back to the CD and see if WIN? can now find and format the whole drive. Some viruses I've seen will allocate their own partition and hide the worm there with password protection. Having a full back up or up to date incremental backups can save many headaches and make a restore a snap.

Thanks for getting back to me.

I'll try your suggestion. I've nothing to lose now. The disk is scrap.
I tried a low level format utility from HDD Gurus. The utility was unable to finish. It
aborted at about 4% completion.

Now that you bring up the possiblity of the drive failing, have you got a spare drive, any size, you can try. I once encountered a very simular fault and it turned out to be the IDE drive controller on a P3 system board. It just seemed to fail quicker and quicker with multiple attempts to format. After nights rest it almost finished and then locked up. I still have the drive, only a 40GB but comes in handy when moving an image from one system to a new drive.

[johnpoiron]

LiveBrianD, on 21 November 2012 - 07:06 PM, said:

Try running Seatools on it. That said, it sounds like the disk itself is dying. I had one that did this before (I could only do a quick format, not a full one), and was full of bad sectors.

Thanks for getting back to me with that suggestion.

If Seatools fails, might you know how I would find a similarly pin configured disk from Seagate
or Western Digital? I've seen plenty of MK4021GAS's on the web; but they are used or refurbs, and so they
have as many hours as mine or even more.

I cannot find a site that cross references part numbers.

Many thanks.

[johnpoiron]

mjd420nova, on 21 November 2012 - 07:35 PM, said:

johnpoiron, on 21 November 2012 - 06:41 PM, said:

mjd420nova, on 20 November 2012 - 07:28 PM, said:

One approach that will offer success where other angles didn't You first have to boot yo a CD/DVD and run the partition manager. DELETE every partitiion you can find. First delete the extended partitions, often asssigned other drive names D:, E:, etc. Then the main C: partition. Reboot back to the CD and enter the manager to be sure the partitions are all gone. Now you can allocate a new partition, activate it and boot back to the CD and see if WIN? can now find and format the whole drive. Some viruses I've seen will allocate their own partition and hide the worm there with password protection. Having a full back up or up to date incremental backups can save many headaches and make a restore a snap.

Thanks for getting back to me.

I'll try your suggestion. I've nothing to lose now. The disk is scrap.
I tried a low level format utility from HDD Gurus. The utility was unable to finish. It
aborted at about 4% completion.

Now that you bring up the possiblity of the drive failing, have you got a spare drive, any size, you can try. I once encountered a very simular fault and it turned out to be the IDE drive controller on a P3 system board. It just seemed to fail quicker and quicker with multiple attempts to format. After nights rest it almost finished and then locked up. I still have the drive, only a 40GB but comes in handy when moving an image from one system to a new drive.

Thank you for that suggestion. The best I can come up with is a 1/2GB WD that I pulled before scrapping a 386 chassis. But I can try it; as the disk needs to be wiped clean anyhow.

[LiveBrianD]

johnpoiron, on 22 November 2012 - 05:24 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 21 November 2012 - 07:06 PM, said:

Try running Seatools on it. That said, it sounds like the disk itself is dying. I had one that did this before (I could only do a quick format, not a full one), and was full of bad sectors.

Thanks for getting back to me with that suggestion.

If Seatools fails, might you know how I would find a similarly pin configured disk from Seagate
or Western Digital? I've seen plenty of MK4021GAS's on the web; but they are used or refurbs, and so they
have as many hours as mine or even more.

I cannot find a site that cross references part numbers.

Many thanks.

The replacement drive doesn't have to be the same model number, just IDE/ATA/PATA (note: SATA is NOT the same thing at all) and 2.5". See here: http://www.newegg.co...0%20%2f%20ATA-6

[waldojim]

Here is an inexpensive Toshiba drive that should do the trick: Clicky here

This post has been edited by waldojim: 22 November 2012 - 08:06 PM

[LiveBrianD]

waldojim, on 22 November 2012 - 08:05 PM, said:

Here is an inexpensive Toshiba drive that should do the trick: Clicky here

Isn't his original drive 2.5", and that one 1.8"?

[waldojim]

You know, I spotted that mistake, grabbed the right link, and apparently, it didn't paste correctly...

Try this again, with the right one this time.

[LiveBrianD]

Yep, that looks more like it.

[johnpoiron]

LiveBrianD, on 21 November 2012 - 07:06 PM, said:

Try running Seatools on it. That said, it sounds like the disk itself is dying. I had one that did this before (I could only do a quick format, not a full one), and was full of bad sectors.

Thanks again for the suggestion on using Seatools.
Seatools worked; but the end result is that Seatools revealed two things:

1) SMART has tripped.
2) Seatools was unable to repair the damages.

I don't need any more convincing that this disk is scrap.
Fortunately, my data is safe.

Thanks again for your help.

[johnpoiron]

waldojim, on 22 November 2012 - 09:32 PM, said:

You know, I spotted that mistake, grabbed the right link, and apparently, it didn't paste correctly...

Try this again, with the right one this time.

Thank you for those replacement disk suggestions.
Hopefully those 2.5" form factor disks are similar enough
on the outside, that they will fit in the same carrier
that the Toshiba fits in.

[waldojim]

johnpoiron, on 23 November 2012 - 02:42 PM, said:

waldojim, on 22 November 2012 - 09:32 PM, said:

You know, I spotted that mistake, grabbed the right link, and apparently, it didn't paste correctly...

Try this again, with the right one this time.

Thank you for those replacement disk suggestions.
Hopefully those 2.5" form factor disks are similar enough
on the outside, that they will fit in the same carrier
that the Toshiba fits in.

Hard drives for laptops are fairly standard, you just have to make sure to have the right interface. The older machine you have, is using the IDE/PATA interface. After that, it is just a matter of finding a drive in the price/size/performance ratios you are looking for. I assume, with an older machine like this, that a lower priced drive was preferred.

[smax013]

waldojim, on 23 November 2012 - 06:57 PM, said:

Hard drives for laptops are fairly standard, you just have to make sure to have the right interface. The older machine you have, is using the IDE/PATA interface. After that, it is just a matter of finding a drive in the price/size/performance ratios you are looking for. I assume, with an older machine like this, that a lower priced drive was preferred.

You do have to be careful of the physical height ("vertical" size) of laptop (aka 2.5") drives.

For an older computer using IDE/PATA drives such as this case, I don't believe this will be an issue since such drives max out at about 320 GB and all are 9.5mm tall.

For the new high capacity SATA drives, it is an issue, however. For example, WD makes a 2 TB SATA drive that is 15 mm tall and will not actually fit in any laptop that I am aware of. Even some older computers cannot handle 12.5 mm drives, which are fairly common in larger capacity SATA drives.