External hard drive beyond redemption?

[None of the above]

I have an external hard drive which had my back ups in two partitions.
I decided to delete all the files (recently acquired a laptop for back up purposes) and thought the easiest way was to format the entire drive.
Unfortunately, it appears that the drive is now useless. It has no partitions, and any attempt to load files on it is rejected on the grounds that is not formatted....... oh, yes it is!
Further attempts to format it again, by means of WinXP formatting tool or Partition Magic, fail. Incidentally, the drive shows on PM as 'bad'.
I imagine that, in extremis, it would be worth removing the drive from its enclosure, installing it in a PC and doing an FDISK.
The enclosure appears to be sealed so that might not be too easy. I suppose that forcible entry would enable the drive to be saved but I wouldn't want to run the risk of damaging it in the attempt.
The long and the short of it is, can anybody suggest some means of resurrecting it, please?

Anyway, if you have been, thanks for reading. (Apologies and acknowledgements to the late John Ebdon).

Thanks, one and all.

N o t a

[Saab Dastard]

NOTA,

How did you format it? In WinXP Program Manager?

Can you see the status in Disk Manager? Perhaps you need to configure it there to use it?

SD

[None of the above]

SD.........

Initially I formatted the drive using Partition Magic, and have made a further attempt in WinXP by right clicking on the drive and clicking on 'Format'.
This process gets to about 98% complete but then announces that the job can not be completed.
On Vista, I've tried using the Disk Management utility but without success.
It's on my other screen now - it shows the drive as 76.70Gb RAW Healthy, (Active, Primary Partition). Right clicking and selecting 'Format' starts off the procedure but it never completes the task. 'Windows was unable to complete the format' is the sole result. This happens when either a quick format or the full job is selected.

All a bit of a puzzle, really. Does any of the above help at all?

N o t a

[Cornish Jack]

Been there, done that ,etc.
IIRC the solution was Knoppix, a Linux distro which accessed all the disk space and formatted it OK. I bought my copy on E-Bay but a Dogpile or Google search should point you in the right direction. A useful bit of kit to have around when Redmond's finest goes 'walkabout' again.

[Saab Dastard]

Cornish Jack,

Good tip, but I'm surprised you bought it - you can download it for nothing and create your own CD!

SD

[None of the above]

CJ........

Thanks for your reply. Could you enlarge on your response for me please?

I'm a bit confused about using Knoppix.
I've got an old machine available for use. If I install Knoppix on that and plug in the external HDD, will it then do its stuff in that configuration?
I also have one or two other Linux distros in the drawer here. Is it likely that a distro other than Knoppix will work?

Many thanks,

N o t a

[Cornish Jack]

Nota - Yes, apologies for not including the 'how to's' ...
Knoppix is able to run from the CD drive and self-installs. Just stick it in the drive and let it run. When it comes up with a Command 'boot' prompt, type in 'Knoppix' and sit back until it has finished installing. (If you want to monitor progress, hit the Esc key)
Once it has installed, you can access the drives, check capacities, format etc. It's pretty intuitive but if you have problems let me know and I'll run my copy and refresh my memory on the exact sequences.
As regards other distros working, certainly, if they have been installed but the Knoppix advantage is that it runs from the CD without hard installation - possibly Ubuntu and/or Suse would do similarly.

[None of the above]

CJ...........


Many thanks for that. I've got an Ubuntu disk, along with one or two others, so I'll give that a whirl. Come to think of it, there's probably a Knoppix distro knocking about on one of my magazine cover disks.

Ta again

N o t a

[bnt]

Another possibility that just occurred to me is: it might be a drive that requires specific software from the maker. If it's a known brand like Western Digital or Seagate, then you might want to look it up on the company website.

The other extreme is what I did: I put a standard drive in a USB case that I bought separately. Last time I formatted that I also used Linux - so that's good advice - but another option is to remove the drive from the case and temporarily install it in a PC to format. The main niggle then would be the "boot order": the PC might try to boot from that drive, and not the normal drive. In that case you'd need to make BIOS changes, or invoke a Boot Menu if you have one.

[green granite]

Another possibility that just occurred to me is: it might be a drive that requires specific software from the maker.

It's called low level formatting, in the old days usually run as a self booting floppy under dos, and it will then need a "normal" format afterwards. Not certain how they are run nowadays but the companies web sites will I'm sure tell you.