Hard drive format help

[melchiorvester]

So I am helping a friend out trying to format his hard drive (WB blue) after he has flipped the switch in the back of his power supply a couple of times making Windows files corrupt and doing so made windows not boot or recover from it.

 

From then we have tried re formatting his hard drive to reinstall windows but are unable to get it to format at all and says it fails in both command prompt and windows format tool.

 

Just trying to resolve this issue to get it to format so he can use the hard drive again as storage since he has bought an SSD now for his Windows and will use that while this hard drive isn't working.

[BennyGoodman]

Maybe boot onto a windows install disk/pc and delete the partitions? Off the specific hard drive I mean

[melchiorvester]

Just now, BennyGoodman said:

Maybe boot onto a windows install disk/pc and delete the partitions?

I am on a different PC with a USB to SATA adapter so it shows up as a drive and It says it is RAW and is unable to format

[scottyseng]

8 minutes ago, melchiorvester said:

I am on a different PC with a USB to SATA adapter so it shows up as a drive and It says it is RAW and is unable to format

You don't have another SATA data cable? I would recommend plugging the drive straight into the motherboard SATA ports instead of those USB to SATA adapters, some are known to cause issues.

[melchiorvester]

Just now, scottyseng said:

You don't have another SATA data cable? I would recommend plugging the drive straight into the motherboard SATA ports instead of those USB to SATA adapters, some are known to cause issues.

I have tried that with the same result

[scottyseng]

2 minutes ago, melchiorvester said:

I have tried that with the same result

Hmm, try going to command prompt, type "diskpart" (without the quotes), and then "list disk". Next, write "select disk #" (# is the number of the correct drive, usually the C drive is disk 0). and then type "clean".

 

Be sure you select the correct disk though, as you don't want to run clean on the wrong drive...

[melchiorvester]

1 minute ago, scottyseng said:

Hmm, try going to command prompt, type "diskpart" (without the quotes), and then "list disk". Next, write "select disk #" (# is the number of the correct drive, usually the C drive is disk 0). and then type "clean".

 

Be sure you select the correct disk though, as you don't want to run clean on the wrong drive...

Have already tried that too. Still unable to format in anyway. When I run the clean command it says "diskpart has encountered an error: data error (cyclic redundancy check)

[scottyseng]

1 minute ago, melchiorvester said:

Have already tried that too. Still unable to format in anyway. When I run the clean command it says "diskpart has encountered an error: data error (cyclic redundancy check)

Yeah, I think the drive must've been damaged somehow then by the power cycling. It's possible that your friend killed the drive itself (the platter system) and only the drive controller board is working. I had this happen on my dead external drive before. So the drive shows up on BIOS / disk management (Because of the controller board), but the actual internals of the drive are dead.

 

The drive does spin up though?

[melchiorvester]

6 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Yeah, I think the drive must've been damaged somehow then by the power cycling. It's possible that your friend killed the drive itself (the platter system) and only the drive controller board is working. I had this happen on my dead external drive before. So the drive shows up on BIOS / disk management (Because of the controller board), but the actual internals of the drive are dead.

 

The drive does spin up though?

Right. Yes I do feel the drive spinning up and constantly spinning when I try to format it

[scottyseng]

Just now, melchiorvester said:

Right. Yes I do feel the drive spinning up and constantly spinning when I try to format it

Yeah, sounds like my dead external drive...It did the same. I'm out of ideas now for getting the drive back to life.

[kirashi]

53 minutes ago, melchiorvester said:

Have already tried that too. Still unable to format in anyway. When I run the clean command it says "diskpart has encountered an error: data error (cyclic redundancy check)

In my technician experience, 90% of the time a CRC check error means the drive is defective in some way.

Either the circuit board is not writing and reading back the same data (hence the CRC error) or the drive is physically damaged.

 

Using Diskpart from an Administrator Command prompt on another computer with the "sel disk #" and "clean" commands should have worked.

Alternatively, booting to something like GParted or PartedMagic should've worked too, but not if the drive is failing in some way.

[melchiorvester]

On 9/26/2016 at 8:24 PM, kirashi said:

In my technician experience, 90% of the time a CRC check error means the drive is defective in some way.

Either the circuit board is not writing and reading back the same data (hence the CRC error) or the drive is physically damaged.

 

Using Diskpart from an Administrator Command prompt on another computer with the "sel disk #" and "clean" commands should have worked.

Alternatively, booting to something like GParted or PartedMagic should've worked too, but not if the drive is failing in some way.

Right from my work of IT this seems to be a dead drive