Solved Original hard drive not seen, can't format

[cbrundage]

What I see is

DISPART> clean all
_ (blinking)

I just see the blue On light on the front of the computer, no blinking light.

 

[karlsnooks]

be patient.

 

[cbrundage]

It's formatting now. It gives a percentage which is helpful.

 

[cbrundage]

Success!

I can't believe it! It's there! I tried moving a file there and opening it just to make sure! I'm so impressed! Tell me the name of your favorite charity and I want to send a little donation for all your trouble! Many many thanks!! You have been so patient.
Christina

 

[karlsnooks]

Christina,
Glad to be able to help.
Salvation Army.

 

[cbrundage]

I see you are in Texas so I sent a donation to the Salvation Army there. Wonderful organization!
Thanks again,
Christina

 

[jumanji]

Hi cbrundage,

I am glad to note that you regained the hard drive with the untiring karlsnooks walking you through the DiskPart - clean all commands.

When you expressed your reservations on the Low Level Format Tool, I did not want to force anything and at that point of time, I knew for certain that karl will be there soon with his clean all commands and get you through. ( Well, as a professional scientist-engineer, I knew what another professional is going to come up with. )

I have also noted that you had tried the LLF tool, but aborted it half-way through, getting nervous. What all I can say is that had you allowed it to complete, it would have done what the clean all commands did - zero-filling each and every sector of the hard drive and reinitialising the hard disk to the factory condition without any tutoring and minimal action from the user.

Never mind, what matters is the end and not the means.

Hi karlsnooks,

Without doubt, I am full of admiration for your persistent tutoring the OP with Diskpart.

Insofar as LLF is concerned, I am afraid that you still have in mind the bygone LLF of yesteryears.

Hard disk drives prior to the 1990s typically had a separate disk controller that defined how data was encoded on the media. With the media, the drive and/or the controller possibly procured from separate vendors, low level formatting was a potential user activity.

While it is generally impossible to perform a complete LLF on most modern hard drives (since the mid-1990s) outside the factory, the term "low-level format" is still used for what could be called the reinitialization of a hard drive to its factory configuration.

The present day LLF Tools have proved to be an easy to use, useful tools for even novice users to secure wipe/reinitialise the hard disk.

That procedure - zero-filling of all sectors - will restore a functional drive (that is, one that does not have mechanical problems) to the condition it was in when received from the factory. There are occasions when a modern hard disk can become so badly corrupted that the operating system cannot recover it, and a zero-fill can help in this situation. Stubborn boot sector viruses for example can be hard to eradicate without resorting to low-level intervention. Since the zero-fill cleans all programs and data off the drive it will get rid of almost any data-related problem on the drive, such as viruses, corrupted partitions and the like.

Most notably, these provide an easy means to fix pendrives that suddenly turn write-protected.

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/227189-usb-flash-drive-sandisc-files-asking-format.html#post1902898

If you have any other reason for your aversion to using LLF tools, please let us know. Thanks.

 

[cbrundage]

I thank you, jumanji, also for all your trouble! I am pretty competent with working with programs but don't like working in system files, so I am grateful that it worked out and that others have been so helpful! It really is a blessing to have forums like this.
Many thanks again,
Christina

 

[sharpeink]

Disk/Volume cannot format or clean ....

Well I found it but its not working and Im on image backup drive c
it has 39GB and im at copacity, but I have 400 out there I found it your way here. but Im stuck getting it open to use ..

Listen to the pros.

Now excellent that your drive showed up in diskpart.

Go back to DiskPart.

Select the disk.

then
DETAIL DISK

now I want you to copy what you see and paste it into your next post.

Also
LIST VOLUME
SELECT VOLUME 9 (or whatever corresponds to first volume on your problematic disk)
DETAIL VOLUME

once again copy and paste into your post.

Here is how you can copy and paste from that command shell window:
Up in the top left hand corner is a wierd looking icon.
Click on that icon | choose Edit | choose Mark
drag you cursor to "mark" the area you want to copy
Hit Enter

the marked area is now stored in the clipboard.
Switch back to where you are generating the reply post and use
Ctrl + V to paste the clipboard into your post

If you want to cut out some posts back and forth:
Select the volume for the problematic drive,
then
ASSIGN LETTER=K

that will assign the letter K to the volume.
K is just an example. Use whatever you would like.

 

[websquad]

Stuck in DiskPart

I followed KarlSnooks instructions to the letter (or so I thought) in trying to solve my problem: I have a 111GB SSD (120GB advertised) as "C" and I want to replace it with a 223GB (240GB advertised) drive (a never-before used device). I could see it displayed as the BIOS went through POST and initial load, and if I got into the BIOS I could see it, but not Windows 7 (to keep confusion at a minimum, I uninstalled the four rotating hard drives before I started this). However, once I got onto Windows 7 and opened Windows Explorer, it was nowhere to be found. So, KarlSnooks' tutorial on DiskPart seemed to be on-target.

I had no problem starting DiskPart and running the commands (I'm a retired IT guy who after concentrating on mainframes, got my feet really wet in MS-DOS). The "detail disk" command for my selected disk had basically the same numbers as cbrundage got. Here was the list disk command:

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 111 GB 1024 KB
Disk 1 Online 223 GB 223 GB

I next changed to disk 1. The new SSD is from Intel (the old from SanDisk), so detail disk proved that I had the correct device:

DISKPART> detail disk

INTEL SS DSC2BW240A4 SCSI Disk Device
Disk ID: 00000000
Type : ATA
Status : Online
Path : 1
Target : 1
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#ATA(C01T01L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

Next I started DetailDisk to populate the new device with zeros. About five hours later, I figures something was wrong, because it was still running. Used Control-C to abort the command. After it stopped, I used list volume to see what was there:

list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 H DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
* Volume 1 C System NTFS Partition 111 GB Healthy System[/FONT][/COLOR]

So, Volume 0 was "C", but now it is my DVD-ROM; Volume 1 was the new Intel SSD, and it is nowhere to be found.

Suggestions?

 

[websquad]

My problem solved

The problem appears to be fixed. I'm writing this from my Windows 10 test machine -- on my Windows 7 machine (discussed above) I did a system search on "partition" -- did this because I remembered that the Windows 7 partition manager had a facility to recognize an unformatted drive, declare it as a "simple" drive, and then format it. So I opened up "Disk Management" and found both SSD's listed, but one was not active (or something like that -- it had a black bar on it indicating that it was not an active drive, whilst the boot SSD had a blue drive and was assigned a drive letter ("C"). So I clicked on it to make it active -- note -- that is likely not the correct term, but Windows 10 at this point has no system maintenance tools, and I'll not mess with the system in trouble until all is fixed). In doing so, I specified that the new SSD is to be drive "D". Once that process was completed (as I recall, it was almost immediate), I then started the formatting (about 1 1/2 hours ago). This will take a long time, because it is only about 18% done. But I can wait.

So, the trick for me was to fine the partition manager, which is part of "Disk Management" ... I had used that utility several years ago -- the trick for me finding it was to search in Windows Help on "partition."