Seagate Pipeline 500gb HDD problem

[skronk]

Hi all,

This drive was removed from Sly box and replaced with larger one.

Formatted on Vista machine and installed externally with mains powered enclosure in DM800se with Openpli and worked for 2 days before the box wanted to re initialize the drive. Upon attempting this drive could not be formatted stating MKFS failure. I have removed it and attempted to reformat on PC but none of my computers will recognise the drive....(XP, Vista, Widows 7 Premium)

I have "tested" the drive with Seagates own software and it passes every test.

Can anyone suggest the next step or is it heading for the bin ?

Thanks

[cunny]

When you say it wont recognise the drive, how have you tested it?

I'd load up windows setup with a xp disk and see if its there and run a chkdsk /r on it from recovery console.

Then maybe a low level format (not the quick option) from win setup

[skronk]

When you say it wont recognise the drive, how have you tested it?

I'd load up windows setup with a xp disk and see if its there and run a chkdsk /r on it from recovery console.

Then maybe a low level format (not the quick option) from win setup

Thanks for reply Cunny.

Tested it with Seagate tools downloaded from their site.

Every test passed. Computer obviously addressing hdd in question.

However when plugged in to computer through USB socket the drive letter is never recognised / addressed.

I cannot understand it at all !

[cunny]

Could be an issue with the usb caddy mate. Use a usb port on back of pc direct into motherboard.

So when the HDD is plugged in direct to motherboard via sata it works ok?

[Egren71]

In your post you say that Openpli tried to format it but reported MKFS failure.
MKFS sounds like a linux command, this brings up the question of what type of filing system did mkfs try to format?
If it was a linux filing system eg ext3 or ext4 or one of many others then Windows will not recognise it as windows only recognises windows filing systems. And if windows doesn't recognise it windows will not give it a drive letter.
What you need to do is :-
either put it into a linux machine and let that format it to whatever filing system you require or what your Openpli prefers. Could also do this with a live linux distro.
or get windows to treat it as a new disc and delete the old partition and create a new partition on it and format it using Disk Management inside Computer Management inside Administrative tools in the Control pannel. This is the path to it on XP it may be somewhere else on Vista as i have never used it and don't have access to it.
But if the hardware is recognising it but the software is not then the problem is most probably with the software, windows in this case.

[skronk]

Hi,

Sorry, something cropped up...back now.

Have installed direct to motherboard using rear USB of desktop.

Still the drive is not recognised. However the computer constantly makes that irritating noise that it makes when you plug in something externally...eg...USB stick.

These noises repeat constantly every 15-20 secs.

Do you think its ~~~~ed ?

[lagerland]

Does it show if you right click my comp,manage,storage,disc management(local) blue if healthy,black unhealthy.............

[skronk]

Lagerland,

Thanks for reply.

Yes it shows when I do that

63mb unallocated in black.

463mb in primary partition in blue.

[Egren71]

Where it says you have a 463mb primary partition in blue, does it say what type of partition as in NTFS or FAT32 or does it say unknown.

If it says NTFS or FAT32 then you should be able to right click on it and either assign it a drive letter or change the drive letter. It may be that it has been assigned a drive letter that is already in use or not assigned one at all.
If it says Healthy and unknown then it is probable that it has been formatted to something that windows doesn't understand. In which case you you can right click on the partition and choose to format it back to something windows does understand. But by doing so you will lose anything that is on the drive.

[skronk]

Hi Egren71

There is nothing on the drive.

Anything that will restore it would be great.

The options are greyed out when I right click primary partition.

When right click Unallocated sector I have option to create new simple volume. Tried this and message "cannot be performed due to i/o error"

The drive has no letter assigned. Any help appreciated.

[Egren71]

Ok assuming vista is the same as windows7 if you go to your
start menu / control panel / system and security / administrative tools
then start computer management by right clicking on it and choosing to run as administrator hopefully everything won't be greyed out.

[ibkus]

Also, if you right click on the Drive in Computer Management, you may be given the option to intialise the Disc. If the option is there, initialise it, format it and you should then be good to go

[skronk]

Right all,

Got disk formatted NTFS. Xp would not do anything else. Can put info on disk using windows. However when I connect the disk to DBox it does not want to know. Drive light goes off when I try to initialize in the DBox.

[Egren71]

Yeah XP is a pain in that respect. Win95 and Win98 would format very large drives as Fat32 but XP will not format anything larger than about 32G.
Also some versions of Linux only support NTFS in read only mode by default.
So you are going to need a program like SwissKnife that can be installed on XP and will format large Fat32 partitions. The down side to Fat32 is that it only supports 2Gig as a maximum file size so if you are using your drive to record programs on you need to make sure they do not exceed 2Gig otherwise you will have problems.
If you can install an NTFS read write driver in your DBox then NTFS can support larger than 2Gig files, but i don't know if this is possible. Alternatively if you can successfully get your DBox to format the drive, and i know this is where your problems started, it will most probably format the drive as either Ext2 or Ext3 and these can support larger that 2Gig files. However as you have found out windows does not know what to do with an Ext2or Ext3 filing system.
My suggestion to you would be get SwissKnife and see if you can live with a Fat32 filing system.

[Egren71]

Another thought just occurred to me. What happens if you first remove the NTFS partition using your Windows machine, then try to format it in your DBox when it has no partitions to start with.