format WD HDD

[FixxeS]

I have an WD HDD, It was my main drive on my PC till I got a BSOD and the drive stopped booting. since I could not boot, I tried to install Ububtu, which failed. my only solution was to buy another HDD. than, I bought a case and I made my old WD HDD an External drive, but using DISKPART it shows a bunch of partitions, shows 5 partitions, 3 hidden being the biggest 20GB (probably swap partitions from the attempt to install Ubuntu?) and 2 partitions that were where windows was installed (250GB for windows + 600GB to save personal files). windows only shows me those 2 partitions, and I can't format them using right click the drive or disc management. Diskpart says they are all RAW partitions. Low level format tool is not able to find my malfunctioning drive (HDDLLF).

any tips? right now I don't have budget to buy another 1TB HDD since I am buying an SSD drive next week... any tips on how to get this done would be appreciated.

 

[Chicano]

So I suppose you only want to format the drive by any means, no partition or data recovery intended? Shouldn't be a problem. First thing; If you can see it as external, you Hard Disk Sentinel... depending on what condition it detects; If in bad condition/low percentages and bad sector cout on red background; I could be a Hardware issue.. and if it shows it in good condition, the problem is software related. If bad, it wouldn't be worth recovering though you may want to try it, and use it as unimportant data storage... if if good, recovery is the obvious next step.

Suggested methods of formatting:
1. Try running "chkdsk x: /r" from a command prompt window or from the drive letter properties > Tools. Next try formating it from Disk Management.
2. From a Windows installer Disk/USB; Format it normally as if going to install Windows. The drive options has options to delete each detected partition to tormat the HDD next. http://dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-7-install.html
3. You can also use any repair CD (Hiren's Boot CD, Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, Parted Magic Linux boot disk / or Gparted).. the best of these options is probably Gparted as it can format any HDD, do it fast and better, in any file system... besides the ISO download is smaller. Every Linux distro includes Gparted so that's another option for a Live bootable disk.
4. And also some Partition Managers (Minitool, EASEUS) ionclude an option to create a bootable disk partition manager so you can format hard to format HDDS .
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/?source=recommended
5. After you have formatted the HDD you can run the Low Level Format Tool to recondition the platter surface as best as possible and leave it ready for a final format with a file system.

 

[FixxeS]

good now I have a problem: when I was going to follow your steps, windows is not detecting the drive anymore...

 

[Chicano]

When Windows doesn't detect a HDD you can always rely on Linux... Gparted is a bootable CD based on Linux Live and included Gparted partition manager and it's almost certain it will detect the HDD. Use it to delete partitions and format it in NTFS, if the format is successful, Windows should detect it so you can see what condition Hard Disk Sentinel finds it in.
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

 

[FixxeS]

When Windows doesn't detect a HDD you can always rely on Linux... Gparted is a bootable CD based on Linux Live and included Gparted partition manager and it's almost certain it will detect the HDD. Use it to delete partitions and format it in NTFS, if the format is successful, Windows should detect it so you can see what condition Hard Disk Sentinel finds it in.
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

no I already tried to format using Gparted was the first thing I did, but as windows, gparted thrown an error too when I tried to format, I don't remember the specific error.

probably this means just that my WD HDD is dead...

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, FixxeS!

I'm sorry to hear about your issues with the WD HDD, it does seem like you might be dealing with a faied drive. 🙁 I'd advise you to check the warranty of the drive on our official website and see if it's still covered. You should be able to send an RMA request if it is.
You can get in touch with our Customer support either by phone or e-mail.

Hope this helps you! Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[FixxeS]

Hey there, FixxeS!

I'm sorry to hear about your issues with the WD HDD, it does seem like you might be dealing with a faied drive. 🙁 I'd advise you to check the warranty of the drive on our official website and see if it's still covered. You should be able to send an RMA request if it is.
You can get in touch with our Customer support either by phone or e-mail.

Hope this helps you! Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

I checked, has no warranty anymore, if finished 5 months ago...