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DieMaker · 11-12-2002, 08:48 PM

My system locked up (Win200Pro) and after restarting I get a blue error screen. I had multiple partitions, so I installed again to a second partition. It was my only HD at the time, and I used the drive for a few months. I managed to get all my files off the drive. Since then, I have worked for about 6 months trying to fix the drive - no luck yet, I'm going to need some help!

It's a 10 Gig Seagate HD model ST310210A (Firmware V 3.17). The drive had about a 2 MB FAT partition, and 2 NTFS partitions that were about 2 Gig and 8 Gig. My thinking is that since nothing physical damaged the drive, if I can get everything reset, it might work again.

I have tried lots of things in the last few months:
(1) with the bad drive in my working system, WinXP can see the drive, but it can't initialize the drive (it just keeps running when I try to start initialization), so it can't format the drive. Also, PartitionMagic 8.0 can't start with the bad drive in the system. No Win based apps work on this drive.
(2) After many tries, I have found one DOS based wipe app (i think it was east-tec) that did complete - starting at the front going backward for 1 week, and then from the back to the front the second week. FinalRecovery (can't find a demo of Encase) still finds the files on the drive. It's a demo version, so I can't confirm that the files are recovered, but I can tell from the files it is finding real files.
(3) a simple low level format has not worked (IBM's wipe for example). It will not start because it says it's not an IBM drive. Others I've tried (one or two) will not start.
(4) Spinrite (it sees the 2 MB FAT partition, but that's it) reports that the drive does not have the correct cylinders/heads/sectors set (what the software reports about what the drive thinks it has is different from what is printed on the drive). Spinrite indicates that the drive will not work if these settings do not match. It can't be changed in my BIOS. I don't know where else to try to make changes to these settings.
(5) I can't find any firmware to try for this drive. Seagate only has firmware updates for tape drives.

So I can't initialize, format, write zeros, wipe or reset the drive, and I can't change firmware - much less try to fix what is broken! Any suggestions?

11-12-2002, 08:48 PM	#1 (permalink)
DieMaker Registered User Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 26	See today's most popular deals at » Help for Hard Drive Fix My system locked up (Win200Pro) and after restarting I get a blue error screen. I had multiple partitions, so I installed again to a second partition. It was my only HD at the time, and I used the drive for a few months. I managed to get all my files off the drive. Since then, I have worked for about 6 months trying to fix the drive - no luck yet, I'm going to need some help! It's a 10 Gig Seagate HD model ST310210A (Firmware V 3.17). The drive had about a 2 MB FAT partition, and 2 NTFS partitions that were about 2 Gig and 8 Gig. My thinking is that since nothing physical damaged the drive, if I can get everything reset, it might work again. I have tried lots of things in the last few months: (1) with the bad drive in my working system, WinXP can see the drive, but it can't initialize the drive (it just keeps running when I try to start initialization), so it can't format the drive. Also, PartitionMagic 8.0 can't start with the bad drive in the system. No Win based apps work on this drive. (2) After many tries, I have found one DOS based wipe app (i think it was east-tec) that did complete - starting at the front going backward for 1 week, and then from the back to the front the second week. FinalRecovery (can't find a demo of Encase) still finds the files on the drive. It's a demo version, so I can't confirm that the files are recovered, but I can tell from the files it is finding real files. (3) a simple low level format has not worked (IBM's wipe for example). It will not start because it says it's not an IBM drive. Others I've tried (one or two) will not start. (4) Spinrite (it sees the 2 MB FAT partition, but that's it) reports that the drive does not have the correct cylinders/heads/sectors set (what the software reports about what the drive thinks it has is different from what is printed on the drive). Spinrite indicates that the drive will not work if these settings do not match. It can't be changed in my BIOS. I don't know where else to try to make changes to these settings. (5) I can't find any firmware to try for this drive. Seagate only has firmware updates for tape drives. So I can't initialize, format, write zeros, wipe or reset the drive, and I can't change firmware - much less try to fix what is broken! Any suggestions?