External HDD RAW. How to format it?

[dontbugme]

Hello, I tried all day to recover the drive with different software with no luck. So now Im trying to format it, and again no luck. I guess it has to go to the bin?

What else I can try? In Disk Management it says: Healthy! Mad.

 

[Wastedfun]

crazy story, I found the hp format tools worked for my external drive once, and have used it every since. maybe it will help you.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool.shtml

 

[dontbugme]

Wastedfun, thanks for your answer, but that tool is not even seeing it. Although it sees my other usb drive.

 

[Wastedfun]

can the drive be removed the the USB controller and connected with a sata cable?

 

[dontbugme]

can the drive be removed the the USB controller and connected with a sata cable?

Its this one: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-3-5-Inch-Drive-ST305004FDA1E1-RK/dp/B000ND75C0

Do I need to rip it or smth? if its connected to sata cable what will be the difference?

 

[Wastedfun]

http://fiddlings.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/disassembling-a-seagate-free-agent-desk-1tb/

take it apart and connect it with sata (make sure you have a port available in your computer + a sata cable and sata power cord)

 

[dontbugme]

http://fiddlings.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/disassembling-a-seagate-free-agent-desk-1tb/

take it apart and connect it with sata (make sure you have a port available in your computer + a sata cable and sata power cord)

http://thydzik.com/how-to-disassemble-a-seagate-freeagent-pro/

oh, well, looks like Im gonna have "fun" with this case...thanks, Ill try it.

 

[dontbugme]

okay, update for future googlers:

I ripped the case to pieces as its glued and I dont need it nor I want to spend hours to deattach it with some crazy tiny screws. Took the hard drive out of it, connected internally to pc. After that Windows 7 would not boot, just stuck at windows logo screen.

So what I did, I tried hdd regenerate boot cd - didnt help, tried partition wizard boot cd - that would not start at all throwing errors, total rubbish.

After that I tried seagate's seatools boot cd. The reason I didnt try it first is because when hard drive was connected via usb in its original case - seatools couldnt see it.

Started testing the disk, long test showed > 100 errors. Apparently it fixed them and I thought oh yeah now I will boot fine. Nope, same stuck windows boot logo screen. And at last, via seagate's boot cd again I FULL ERASE the disk. It took 3,5 hours to complete. And voilà! I have a the disk now:

 

[Wastedfun]

I am happy it works. However, I would not put anything of value on this drive...it may fail completely at any time.

 

[dontbugme]

I am happy it works. However, I would not put anything of value on this drive...it may fail completely at any time.

sure thing, however I have another drive that failed in the past and it still working 2nd year straight. We'll see how it goes.