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Thread ID: 84508	2007-11-08 12:41:00	Hard disk problem: cannot format or chkdsk USB HDD	pk3049 (13009)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
609571	2007-11-08 12:41:00	I'm trying to prepare a old (damaged) laptop hard disk for a new use as external USB drive. Intended use is just to take a lot of large files (music, video, photos) with me when I'm travelling to family abroad and don't want to take my laptop (and more than fits on a USB stick), or to transfer files to another computer when I don't want to set up network or DL, etc. BTW, I know that the drive will never be trustwhorthy enough to be used as primary back-up or to keep any important files. Background of the drive (Fujitsi 40Gb laptop HDD): euh, I dropped the laptop and the drive crashed (XP didn't boot anymore). Had reasonable back-ups, used knopix (a.o.) to save the data (didn't loose a lot actually), and bought a new HDD drive for the laptop, and a cheap USB case for the old HDD. I thought that the difficult stuff was behind me, and that preparing the old HDD for a new simple life would be easy enough.... My hypothesis was that the HDD had some serious bad sectors, but that I could find a way to tell the HDD (the NTFS MTF or MBR ) never to use these sectors anymore (I've no problem with loosing some Mb, and even some Gb from the capacity), maybe recup some of the lost capacity from the spare sectors that are on all modern HDD (although I actually not need that), and to make from the remainder a fully functional HDD. (so to make it clear: I don't want to "recover" any data or "repair" any bad sectors. The former has been done, and I know the latter is not possible) What I did already: - used HDD LLF Tool to completely empty the HDD (I know it's not a real LLF, but I just wanted to start with a clean slate) (I know it's recommended to use the manufacturer's tool, but I couldn't make the Fujitsu tool work on the external USB drive; I tried with creating MS-DOS boot CD, found some drivers that should've worked, but I never got any further than that). - Used XP to delete the previous 2 partitions (standard Thinkpad set-up), create 1 new partition, but then to my surprise, a full format didn't work (it stopped after 5% done). Since CHKDSK needs a formatted drive to work, I did a quick format, and this worked (but if I understand well, a quick format doesn't really format the entire drive?) - Used CHKDSK, which went ok, and found some bad sectors; - But CHKDSK /F didn't work, it stopped after, again, 5% done (from 1% to 4% went slow but steady in a couple of minutes, but I waited for more than 15 minutes with the 5% showing, so I killed the cmd) So now I'm stuck. I might have some ideas, but no clue about whether this would be the right solution, e.g. - not using NTFS, but FAT32 (I read somewhere that formating is easier and that CHKDSK can repair more with FAT?) - creating two partitions, one with the bad sectors, which I can then ignore (but no clue what tool to use to create a partition that would include all bad sectors?). - use another miracle tool or sequence of actions to make it work (what I read is that most other software actually use the XP commands FORMAT and CHKDSK, so these would not really help). Thanks for your help ! Peter	pk3049 (13009)
609572	2007-11-08 13:52:00	run a manufacturers diagnostic on the hdd it is possibly beyond salvation....	drcspy (146)
609573	2007-11-09 16:09:00	As I understand, these diagnostics tools doesn't seem to work if the drive is connected through USB (it should be IDE or SATA to do full analysis?) Anyway, I only found an eraser tool for the Fujitsi, not a diagnostic tool.	pk3049 (13009)
609574	2007-11-09 19:52:00	Forget it. Throw it away and buy another if you want a backup drive.	pctek (84)
609575	2007-11-09 21:25:00	If you quick format it, you can probably store stuff on it, but you'd probably lose it sooner or later. I really would recommend you follow pctek's advice and chuck it out. Any drive that can't format because of problems with the drive is not ever trustworthy again.	george12 (7)
609576	2007-11-12 14:25:00	Ok, a short report on what I did. (btw, thanks for the replies, but as I wrote in my initial post, I don't want to trust it, use it as back-up, or repair the disk; I just want to use it occasionally to take a bunch of files with me). I used HDDScan to check the surface. It found about 1800 bad LBAs (sectors?), but luckily all concentrated in the first 14k LBAs, out of 78k. Honestly, the map of the first 14k LBAs looked like a massacre, a lot of very slow LBAs as well, next to the bad ones. So I decided to scrap that part altogether. I created two partitions, the first of 6 Gb (with all the bad LBAs), which I never plan to use, and the second of 31 Gb, that I could format in a normal way, and that seems to work. Mission accomplished. I was a bit disappointed to throw away 85% of the disk, but I didn't find a solution to throw away the bad stuff, and use the good LBAs scattered around in between. So it's *a* solution to throw away 6Gb (16% of the drive), but not optimal, because there are only about 4% of bad/slow LBAs. Any tips/advice how to do better?	pk3049 (13009)
609577	2007-11-12 15:51:00	I was a bit disappointed to throw away 85% of the disk, ... This should be : "throw away 16% of the disk" PS: edit function doesn't work for posts? PPS: ok, I notice that there is a time limit (too short?)	pk3049 (13009)
609578	2007-11-12 23:17:00	PS: edit function doesn't work for posts? P PS: ok, I notice that there is a time limit (too short?) :lol: It lasts for 15 mins after the original post.	wratterus (105)
609579	2007-11-12 23:37:00	Doing a full format of the entire drive should allow it to find all bad sectors and stop using them, it may just take a very long time as the drive tries to recover sectors that are completely stuffed Like you say, using USB connection may give problems. connect it back to the laptop and format from a floppy or CD?	Agent_24 (57)
609580	2007-11-13 00:17:00	So it's *a* solution to throw away 6Gb (16% of the drive), but not optimal, because there are only about 4% of bad/slow LBAs. Any tips/advice how to do better? No solution will ever be ideal because a head crash can create dust inside the drive. If any of this ever gets between heads and platter you'll get more errors.	PaulD (232)
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