Drive will not initialize

[bwallace78]

I have an old Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB SATA / 150 HDD that crashed on me. I was able to recover the relevant data I needed off the drive, but I wanted to wipe the drive.

I have used DBAN on the drive, once before, but there was an error message pertaining to the boot sector of the drive. I was re-wiping, using a USB-to-ATAPI/ATA adapter, and I unplugged the power cable, not realizing that there was not a battery in the laptop.

Now, DBAN does not recognize the drive, but windows does (management console - hard drives and storage); however, I cannot initialize the drive.

All recovery/MBR re-write software I have used has not made a difference in the visibility of the drive.

My IT guy at work suggested creating a cable to connect usb directly to the eight-pin connector on the drive (Power, Data Transfer, and ground). That way, I will be able to access the Bootloader, re-flash, and then re-initialize and wipe the drive.

Does anybody know what I need to create this connector? He also stated that a kit was sold at Radio Shack, but I figured I could build on my own.

Thank you for your help,

BW78

 

[bwallace78]

In disk management can you delete the drive... this will remove your partition... repartition... and you should be able to format it and then nuke it... or just take a hammer to the data and power connections and trash it.

Anonymous,

No, I cannot delete the drive because it will not initialize. Disk manager and disk part recognize the disk, but since it is not initialized, cannot "do" anything with it. When I try to initialize, I get the error, "Data Error: Cyclic Redunancy Check".

I have read up on this error, and it appears that I am screwed.

Also, I tried running testdisk to re-write the MBR (using their MBR) and was successful. However, nothing else seemed to work.

FYI, I am using a USB to ATAPI/ATA adapter, and my computer sees the drive, installs the driver for the drive, but nothing else works. That is why I made the statement that Windows can see the drive.

Thank you for your help,

BW78

 

[price_th]

Hammer!

 

[neieus]

The only other option I can think of is to try formatting the drive with a distribution of Linux. I'm not a linux pro by any means but I've found that Linux can some times do things that Windows can't. If you're able to do that then you might be able to get windows to initialize the drive since it will not longer exist as it did before.