[DonnyTEN]

Hello. I've a western digital 1TB Sata hdd that has been used for quite some time. Today, i decide to take it out of storage but the drive seems inaccessible in "my computer". When I first plugged it back up Vista wanted to scan it before windows started, and it reported all these unreadable/ unrecoverable errors. Vista seems to see the partition but when I right click it my computer gets really really slow, and I'm forced to terminate explorer.exe and re run it. The Bios detects the HDD so I'm not quite sure what the problem may be. Any thoughts? Thanks

[Hybr!d]

Sounds faulty or corrupt. If you cannot run the disk check in windows not much you can do.

I would boot off a XP CD and redo the partition and a fresh format.

[mrberty]

ok my Guess would be you connected the drive whilst windows was running ? if this is the case switch off the pc, then connect re boot and hopefully this could sort your problem by windows doing simple BIOS checks then MbL / MBR will load the os with the device drive instaled now which will sort the problem. If this dosent work I would try testing the drive on another computer / laptop let me no how things go :)

[DonnyTEN]

Originally Posted by Hybr!d

Sounds faulty or corrupt. If you cannot run the disk check in windows not much you can do.

I would boot off a XP CD and redo the partition and a fresh format.

:( I have to format the drive? me gots lots of valuable data on 'dere

[DonnyTEN]

Originally Posted by mrberty

ok my Guess would be you connected the drive whilst windows was running ? if this is the case switch off the pc, then connect re boot and hopefully this could sort your problem by windows doing simple BIOS checks then MbL / MBR will load the os with the device drive instaled now which will sort the problem. If this dosent work I would try testing the drive on another computer / laptop let me no how things go :)

Good Day. I turned the computer off. Powered off, and connected the HDD, powered on, turned on.

[mrberty]

Did this work donny ?
well I would reccomende formating the drive in windows with a seperate program I forget the name just google Format 32 hard disks. and you will find a decent small program that is freeware and it lets you just connect the drives format them in which ever format you would like

Operating system - ntfs
Hard drive storage vids, music ect - fat32

hope this helps.

[DonnyTEN]

Hello.

Here's the deal.

This hard drive is recognized in the Bios by its moidel/serial number, But whenever I try to install windows vista onto it it takes a reeeeally long time to get to the actual installation. when it finally does, After being introduced to a screen that tells me I have an unknown disk in my system, i'm able to access the drive and format it. After I format it and try to install windows on it windows states:

"Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria". So i found some support on windows website... this link..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927520

I followed these instructions but when i type "clean all" from step 7, it acts as if the command has been executed but it seems to never finish.

1. Insert the DVD into the DVD drive.
2. On the disk selection screen, press SHIFT+F10. A Command Prompt window opens.
3. Type diskpart, and then press ENTER to open the diskpart tool.
4. Type list disk, and then press ENTER. A list of available hard disks is displayed.
5. Type sel disk number, and then press ENTER. number is the number of the hard disk that you want to clean. The hard disk is now selected.
6. Type det disk, and then press ENTER. A list of partitions on the hard disk is displayed. Use this information to verify that the correct disk is selected.
7. Make sure that the disk does not contain required data, type clean all, and then press ENTER to clean the disk. All the partitions and all the data on the disk is permanently removed.
8. Type exit, and then press ENTER to close the diskpart tool.
9. Close the Command Prompt window.
10. Click the Refresh button to update the disk selection screen. This step lists the disk.
11. Run Windows Vista Setup to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.

------------

I went to the western digital site and downloaded the test utility for the HDD. The test utility fully recognizes my drive and gives the model/serial numbers of the drive and acknowledges that "SMART" is enabled in green. However when I do a Quick test on this drive i get an error:

"Quick test on drive 1 did not complete! status code=07 (failed read test element) Failure checkpoint=97 ( unknown test) SMART self test did not complete on drive 1!" How can I make this drive usable?

At this point i'm not sure what to do. Any help would is welcome.

Thx