Won't detect HDD

[Steve H]

Formatted and reinstalled windows to a computer the other day - before setup even started I realised there was a boot sector virus on the PC (Trend AV - presume this is preloaded in bios... indicated there was).

Anyway, I assumed deleting the partition and formatting would get rid of the virus... It formatted anyway, and I reinstalled XP.

Windows loaded fine, proceeded to reinstall office, and then installed AVG AV. Did a final reboot to test everything was working before I gave it back when upon trying to load the CP it BSOD'd. It said dumping physical memory, so I was going to leave it until that had finished when lo and behold the bloody power failed, and the computer rebooted.... upon rebooting on the original post screen it wouldn't detect either primary master or slave.. (This being the HDD and one of the CD Drives). There's 4 things on the IDE Channels btw, a hdd and cd rom on one channel and 2 cd roms on the other channel - yeah not ideal.

So anyway, it will not detect either the primary master, HDD or primary slave CD Rom on the post screen now.

Soooo, I managed to load setup again via one of the other CD rom drives, managed to repartition the original HDD AGAIN, and copied the setup files over to it - so its obv. working!

However upon rebooting and setting the boot order to HDD first, it will not detect the HDD and as such won't boot from it.

My thoughts are that the boot sector virus has buggered something up.. I did scan via AVG to see if it'd detect it in winblows but as it was the free ed. only it didn't see anything.

Any ideas? A low level format a cure? Anyone direct me to any decent programs?

[Paul K]

What make of drive is it?
http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/l...el-format.html

[bdav]

Pauls right - That will sort out just about any problems like that - brings the HDD to a factory state

[Raistlin]

What does a low-level format accomplish that a standard format will not?

[bdav]

Standard level formats make the hard drive/os etc "think" there is nothing there - Low level literaly goes and writes "0" on every sector of the disk.

[Steve H]

Originally Posted by Raistlin

What does a low-level format accomplish that a standard format will not?

AFAIK it formats at the lowest level (machine code - 0s and 1s), reverts everything back to 0's.... otherwise known as zero formatting.

[Paul K]

Low level format writes zeros to the entire drive where as I think a standard format just re-writes the FAT tables etc. The data isn't actually deleted from the drive.
I'll let someone else explain it properly lol
3 answers in 2 minutes, must be about right then

[Steve H]

Fujistu drive...

Cases as well, it's just took me 10 minutes to open this one :angry:... Why make them so difficult to open?

Will give it a go now.

I thought low level formatting is something done by the disk manufacturer and can't be changed?

Maybe booting with a windows 98 start up disk and running an fdisk partition deletion,then maybe either an unconditional format A:format c:/u/s (think thats right) or an fdisk /mbr to have a bash at sorting the boot record

from a google search http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatLow-c.html

Warning: You should never attempt to do a low-level format on an IDE/ATA or SCSI hard disk. Do not try to use BIOS-based low-level formatting tools on these newer drives. It's unlikely that you will damage anything if you try to do this (since the drive controller is programmed to ignore any such LLF attempts), but at best you will be wasting your time. A modern disk can usually be restored to "like-new" condition by using a zero-fill utility.

[Steve H]

FJ-IDE Drive Initializer Utility...

from http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/drivers.asp?L=en&CID=1

is that the one I want?

[Raistlin]

Cheers guys

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by Steve H

FJ-IDE Drive Initializer Utility...

from http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/drivers.asp?L=en&CID=1

is that the one I want?

Yep looks like a zero format tool to me

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Warning: You should never attempt to do a low-level format on an IDE/ATA or SCSI hard disk. Do not try to use BIOS-based low-level formatting tools on these newer drives. It's unlikely that you will damage anything if you try to do this (since the drive controller is programmed to ignore any such LLF attempts), but at best you will be wasting your time. A modern disk can usually be restored to "like-new" condition by using a zero-fill utility.

Is that not the same thing though?

[Raistlin]

That link doesn't work zing, any chance of a fix?

[Steve H]

mmmm - what to do?