Cannot initialise HDD keep getting I/O Error...?

I'm in a very odd situation that I think the HDD is toast... but I need a second opinion because I've tried just about everything I know and it will not kick into life. that makes matters even worse. The BIOS shows the channel and port and detects the HDD. DiskPart can see the HDD as well and I run a quick format which was successful...? This is where I get lost. If DiskPart can see the HDD and you can format the HDD than, there is communication via data cable and PWR to the HDD is there otherwise you wouldn't be able to format the HDD would you.

There are things that I haven't tried yet... running Seatools in DOS such better for fault finding. changed the data cable and the PWR SATA cables. any other suggestions would be appreciated
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First, a couple questions:

• Is this a SATA drive?
• Is this a secondary drive, or is it a primary drive that you are trying to install the OS on?

My (limited) understanding is that Windows 'initializes' a disk by rewriting the MBR. So if Windows reports that it can't initialize the disk then that means it can't find a valid MBR to rewrite - for whatever reason.



One reason may be that the MBR is not in the correct location on the disk (which is normally on the 2 byte end marker - 0x55 0xAA - reportedly) and this is all that is necessary to throw Windows into a snit.


The solution may be in doing either a full format, or to wipe the drive (a process that writes all zeros across the drive) and then doing the full format. That should create a new MBR in the correct location for Windows and allow it to be initialized.