Hard Drive Repair tool Prob

[Sirus]

Ive downloaded that Hirens CD tools and Im trying to use the Seagate HD tool to regenerate a bad hard drive

The HD in question is only a wee 20gb basic Seagate one from about 5yrs back and I sort of knew it had probs as the thing froze when booting and stuff and I just got fed up and left it, I dont want to have to buy another one if this can be repaired as it would be handy for my other pc but now Im running the Seagate tools to try and repair it and its giving my lots of errors

Every LBA it counts up has an error and its taking forever and Ive never seen it get off 0%.. it takes hours to get to block 80 but the question is how many blocks is there it must check, it says beside the counting number "max LBA 300,000" or spmething .. it asks where to start and I just say 0mb

So is that how many LBAs/blocks it has to go through before it fixes them?(300,000)

Or is it that the HD is just destroyed and Im wasting my time.. I mean why so long for a wee 20gb to be checked... makes me wonder how long a 500gb would take

Can anyone shed any light on the subject?

cheers

[bomber456]

Try downloading ubcd (ultimate boot cd) there are a couple of utils on that I personally find better than hirens. You can try the seagate util or sometimes it just easier to reset your hd or even do a complete shred including mbr any more info you need just post and i'll get back to you

[Sirus]

Been very busy today sorry for the late reply.... thanks for the response bomber

I will check out the ubcd but do you think my hard drive is recoverable?.. I dont know much about using these sort of tools Ive heard them mentioned a few times then thought to try it out on my hard drive.. but is it normal for the regeneration process to take hrs and on only a 20gb HD?

Ive tried a few times trying different options but it asks where to scan and I always say 0mb and it finds an error at every block and sits on blocks for like 5 minutes sometimes as if its gonna take a week to finish

And also I have no idea how many blocks it has to scan before it moves to the next phase of repairing them,.. I just seen 300,000 and switched it of again

I installed all sorts of OSes on the HD in the past so do you think thats whats screwed up its sectors?

[caveman_nige]

you could pick up a drive like that for pennies at a car boot sale... its gotta be easier to just bin it and pick another for next to nothing...

[Sirus]

Well caveman Im actually in the process of building a new pc and I dont want to be having to fork out on old parts too and as much as I hear about all these bargins to be had at car boot sales I really cant find the time to get to any

It was just that I have soon to be 3 pcs but one is not in operation because of no hardrive.. I was gonna sell the rest of it but it has a weird bios prob that is why I cant offload it to another person who expects it to function normal

Anyway getting back to the HD.. it wasnt mistreated or anything but it use to make a weird jingling noise before it would not boot anymore.. it formats ok but when trying to install windows it goes BSOD and says "hard error"

Im thinking its just corrupt or something but its the seagate tools and stuff taking forever to show any progress.. I was really hoping someone would just post saying yes it takes ages to fix and just leave it be, but I dont like having to leave the pc on for what seems is gonna take days for a wee 20gb

I will try again tomorrow and leave it for 3-4hrs and if it hasnt moved of 0% then its binned I guess, but what if it was really properly fixing its self.. and that also means Im stuck with a good working pc minus the HD

If its not working tomorrow its binned but i know I'll never get round to getting another one

[caveman_nige]

I have left some tools working all night to try and fix a disk to recover data, if i managed to do it i would then chuck the disk as soon as i got the data off.. i mean whats the points it makes a noise which sounds like its dicked, it will not take and OS with BSOD and the oem fix tool it not happy with it... How much time have you got to waste.... If you managed to get the tool to do something, do you think a disk of that age is reliable? A hard disk by its very nature is doomed fail as it has moving parts... You may successfully load it but how long will it last before it is fubar, then you will have wasted way too much time..

basically if a disk displays physical faults it is on it way out and not worth bothering with..

[Sirus]

Yeah your right

Also I forgot to mention that Ive also a Maxtor 80gb that once gave me the BSOD "hard error" when trying to put windows on it but that is now in my powermac and seems to work perfectly

The seagate was on block 88 for more than half an hour so thats it its now being binned

Im now stuck with the guts of a pc that needs a hard drive and cant sell it as it decides to not boot sometimes and I cant even sell it for parts cos the damn processor is soldered to the m/board.. was a great little linux pc too

Also these old small ide drives dont seem to cheap on ebay either they average about 15 quid ... keeping an eye out for one though avoiding Seagates

Cheers anyway dudes

[spidy]

Hi Sirus,
Once you start hearing sound, its most likely a "mechnical" problem. No point wasting your time trying to repair, no software can "repair" that. You'd be better off spending some $ on a new HDD instead, as you won't know how an old one fare......
Good luck!