Can you CHKDSK an unformatted drive?

[osprey4]

I have an older Seagate 160GB drive I want to put in an older machine (Dell Dimension 4550, XP SP3) for extra storage. I use this machine for video capture and DVD authoring.

I put it in last night and the PC started up, then choked. The drive came up clean using the Dell diagnostics (BME read test and SMART test, not the extended read test). I used my XP installation disc to delete then re-partition the drive, booted up and tried to format but it got stuck at 57%.

I think the drive is ok but probably has a few bad sectors. I really just need it for convenience. If it fails, it's not a big deal.

I thought I'd try tonight to delete and re-partition, then run CHKDSK, but I'm not sure you can do this on an unformatted drive. Any other suggestions? (Other than give up?)

[Steve R Jones]

I'd guess that you can't. But it'd only take a minute to try.

[osprey4]

I pirated the drive out of a used Dimension 2350 that was running too slowly. Now I'm beginning to understand why.

[Foggy]

Run kill Disk on it. I used it on a few HDD's I didn't think I could salvage and it worked on some of them.

[osprey4]

I grabbed the DOS version of Seatools, booted it up and ran the long test. Found 34 bad sectors and repaired all of them. That was easy.

Now I'm wondering if I can fix my box of old drives in the basement that all have SMART errors.

[osprey4]

Well, the euphoria was short lived. The drive still does not work. Oh well, off to the recycling center for it.