Format Woes;recovering allocation units

[LeftCoast]

Hi All,

I've repartitioned a used HD (WD Caviar 205AA, one year old) that was working fine, but I want to do a fresh install of Win 98se on it. I blasted the partitions, repartitioned,and am attempting to format.

The problem is that during the format (format c:/s), the screen prompts that it is trying to recover an allocation unit (95,698), and takes 10 minutes or so until it moves on to 95,699, 10 minutes til 95,700, etc. I'm 38, and would like to have this sucker complete the format in my lifetime!

Also, when you repartition and format, is the disk wiped, or are the file letters just changed, with info recoverable? I ask because on a new HDD I just set up with win98se, I installed a cheap mouse that sucked, and the system hung up badly when I tried to uninstall the mouse driver, giving me some kind of "uninstall wizard is busy" error message. I kept getting the message, and as the OS had been set-up for 30 minutes, I said screw it, and repartitioned, reformatted and installed Win98se again. Then, I got the damn uninstall wizard is busy message again!

Suggestions or info to shed some light would be appreciated.

-LC

[Richard Cranium]

1st I'd go to WD's site and download the utility to check the drive for fitness for duty.

These utilities are individual components that make up the Data Lifeguard Tools Ver. 2.8

Diagnostic dlgdiag.zip
October, 2001
(192 KB) The Diagnostics utility allows you to test the drive, print results for last drive tested, repair errors found during the Test Drive option and write zeros to the drive (low-level format).

EZ-Install ezmaker.exe
January, 2002
(1066 KB) EZ-Install is a self-extracting file that creates a bootable diskette that runs only the EZ-Install portion of the DLG Tools. This version of EZ-Install is part of DLG Tools.

BIOS Check dlgchk.zip
August, 2001
(41 KB) BIOS Check reports number of drives physically detected, number of drives accessed by the BIOS and additional drive table information. This utility was written so end users can report their system configuration to Western Digital technical support personnel when discussing disk drive issues.

Ultra ATA Manager dlgudma.zip
May, 2002
(141 KB) This utility is used to enable or disable the Ultra ATA 33/66/100 capability on Western Digital EIDE drives that support this feature.

User's Guide May, 2001
(PDF, 139 KB) This is the Data Lifeguard Tools User's Guide in Adobe PDF format. This file is an excerpt of our Full Drive Installation Guide (PDF, 735KB). View using Acrobat Reader.


http://support.wdc.com/download/dlgless137.asp

When you format a drive, the data stays put but the FAT table (file allocation table) is erased. So most of the data is still there, but the OS can't see it, and just overwrites it when it gets to that sector.

Even if you do an FDISK and erase the partition, it is only the MBR and the FAT table that are erased - the data is still there, but the OS can't see it.

This is not really a problem for a user as the OS won't see any previous files. It's a security issue if you don't want anyone seeing or recovering your old data (believe me, it can be done! ).

If you are worried about someone recovering your data, use a program that writes 0's and 1's to the drive (like BCWIPE or something). But this is overkill for most users anyway IMO. BTW this takes a LOOOONG time, so if you are impatient it's not for you! This process can also reclaim sectors previously marked as bad occasionally, depending on what was wrong with them.

FORMAT will only test bad sectors once - on the next format they have been marked bad and will not be retested. But it needs to test them to mark them...

Most of the disk manufacturer progs have the ability to mark bad sectors so they won't be read again. Use the apps posted by Doc and it should be fine. Just be aware that some progs will try to read bad sectors anyway unless you tell them specifically not to.

Hope this ramble helps
Cheers
Mick

[Richard Cranium]

The last time I checked the cost of recovering data off a FAT32 HD was about the same as the cost of a cheap computer, very high, seems like $3-500.00 I forget exactly.

FYI, and a bit OT, on a NTFS file system, recovering data is much easier, [as I've heard anyway]

For the record, the next time you've installed hardware devices and the drivers are giving fits, the easy fix {usually} is to boot into SAFE mode by holding the Control key during boot, and removing the drivers there and also going into Device manager which will show multiple botched install attempts or modems no longer installed but still lingering ..

Actually data recovery (even after fdisk and format) can be done a bit cheaper yourself by buying a program like www.finaldata.com or even R-Studio (which I used - very nice prog! ) at http://www.r-studio.ca/?FD91.

I recovered a partition that had been accidentally fdisked and formatted on a 1.7G drive and it recovered 98% of the files - not bad!

Cheers
Mick

[LeftCoast]

Thanks for the info, guys.

While I was attempting to check the drive with the WD Data Lifeguard, drive was not showing up; no FAT 32 drive found.
Also, the little sob started "chirping", at me, chirp,chirp,chirp,.............chirp,chirp,chirp,. .......chirp,chirp,chirp..etc.

IYHO, is this thing fried?

-LC

[LeftCoast]

I forgot to stress the chirping is definitely coming from the HD. It vibrates just prior to the sounds.

-LC

Doesn't sound good.

Check your BIOS settings just to be sure the BIOS can still find it, then run data Lifeguard check again after a restart and if it doesn't come up, she's prolly beyond recovery.

Some of the DOS tools like Data Lifeguard may have probs with non-DOS partitions, though, so if it ever had NTFS or ext2 then it might give an error if the MBR is messed up (like as in a failed / aborted format). try www.ontrack.com for tools that can check the physical drive as well as the partition.

But it sounds bad, though. Sad to see....

Cheers
Mick

[Brainchild]

Sorry LC, always a bad thing to hear a crying HD.Sometimes fun to pull the cover and have a look though.

*look what I did to that sucker*

[Detritus]

Sure sounds like a dying HD to me as well, my parents had similar symptoms before it died...

*plays taps slowly... revrently in the background*