# How can I tell if my hard drive is broken?



## superboer08 (Jan 21, 2001)

Hello,
I have read a lot of your listings looking for the answer to my problem, but havent found enough info yet.

Heres the situation:
My system was working fine except for a few "path too long" errors and my computer was getting full of junk, so I decided to totally wipe it and put win98 on in the process. My friend helped me...The old "working" system was an Acer Aspire win95 with an 100mhz (upgraded to 166) and my hard drive was a 5.0 gig western digital caviar(which i've heard were supposed to be good). Anyways, I didn't think about the EZ-drive installed on the hard drive so I never uninstalled it, I just deleted all partitions through Fdisk and formated it...I think that might be part of the problem...Well I never got the 5.0 gig to work since then. I have successfully partitioned it with large memory support and without large memory suppurt (creating several partitions, as EZ-Drive did) and the partitions always seem to stay like I make them, but the formatting is the problem. I can format the drive just fine after partitioning, but when i restart, the drive does not hold format (or data I place on it) correctly. Often (i have formatted several times now) the drive (C







shows "invalid media type" when i try to access it. A couple times it stayed working long enough (I think i did a warm restart) to start the (new)win98 installation...but the pre-install scandisk found errors in every catagory!(media descripter, fat, etc) It said "fixed" for all, but installation failed--same result when I bypassed scandisk.

I've tried a lot of things--not exactally sure if I tried them all corrrectly--but I have written a lot so I will add details as needed.

I've tried reinstalling EZ-drive partitioning, didn't work & I don't want to use it. I've tried diagnostics from western digital--dlgdiag says everythings ok...i used it to write zeros to entire drive,too. I can't get online s.m.a.r.t. test from western digital to work though, because of MS-dos compatibility mode (no idea why its doing that, i think its because im running 2 big drives, doesnt happen when i have just one drive on...tried deleting noide, but bluescreen comes back)
I have partitioned, formatted, and installed win98 on a spare 2.1 gig drive just fine...same steps won't work on the 5.1 gig.

If anyone read all of that, thanks a ton. Any advice would be helpful, I think it boils down to the fact that my hard drive was working fine, then I stupidly tried to wipe it, and i'm wondering if its possible to get the drive to retain data after it shuts off or if I somehow damaged it by wiping it.

Thanks a lot,
Jon


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## LooneyTunes (Apr 12, 2000)

Once a hard drive is wiped, it can be very difficult to get files back, esp a full restoration. Try formatting by doing the following : Make sure your partitions are correct and boot up with floppy. When at the A:> prompt, use command 
FORMAT /U C:
and the same for partition - let me know if that makes a diff. Goodluck.


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## superboer08 (Jan 21, 2001)

Hi 

I was probably not clear enough in my letter. I am not trying to recover any information from my hard drive...I simply want it to work again.

I am at school right now, but I will try reformating again tonight. I have already tried /u and it didn't work any differently. I also wrote zeros to the entire drive, with no good.

I would love any other ideas you guys might have.

Thanks, 
Jon


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## superboer08 (Jan 21, 2001)

Hi

I've made some progress. I partitioned (restarted) and formatted the drive in windows. I then saved information on it and shut it off and restarted, but the information was still there! the first promising thing i've seen yet. 

Well I excited so I took out my good 2.1 gig and hooked up only the questionable 5 gig and started with the win98 boot disk. everything was looking good until just after the preinstall scan I got a USER.EXE error and after restarting, all my partitions were gone. Does anyone know what might be going on? A bad partition sector on the hard drive? My spare drive works fine, I don't think it is the bios.

Thanks, 
Jon


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## Hairy (Mar 20, 2000)

Two possibilties that I see.... 

a) your drive is dead (try putting it in a different system?)

b) a connection problem to or at your drive

Try a different data cable...try plugging and unplugging the jumper a couple times.(it is set correctly?)

You are detecting the drive in the BIOS?


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