Maxtor not playing ball !

[greens117]

Hi
i have a 500 gig external hardrive ,witch is currently using the mac drive file system !
i really want to format and use it as a windows fat or whatever ,every time I try to format it using either windows or macdrive it just tells me that it cant and its in use by another program ,now ive closed mac drive and when i start in safe mode the drive does not show up to format ,what am i doing wrong ?

[Northernbloke]

use something like Hirens BootCD and format it from DOS using FDISK or any of the multitude of Disk tools and other good stuff on there

[greens117]

still no good

[Over Carl]

Did fdisk let you remove/recreate partitions?

Once that's done, try booting into dos again, then formatting the drive in dos to see if that helps.

Also check task manager for any apps that may be scanning the hd. Since I installed paint shop pro x2, it installed some crap that spends forever looking at any removeable media which I removed from startup using msconfig (in windows).

Edit: I take it you have tried using disk management under control panel... admin tools.... computer management?

[Northernbloke]

Is it an external HDD you bought as a complete unit - or did you just buy the enclosure and whack your own hard drive in it?

If it was a complete drive then have a look on the manufacturers website for a formatting tool - I know for sure that Western Digital have one for their drives that will reset it to the way it was originally shipped.

If you went the DIY route, then remove the HDD from the usb enclosure and connect it like a normal HDD and format it that way - if you can't format it connected as IDE/SATA from DOS then the drive is possibly duff (or maybe even has a drive security feature enabled) - but connected in this way it's much easier to troubleshoot

[Mickey]

Have a look for seatools
Its a dos driven floppy that formats even at a low level
or
Hp format utility. this will format any external with its own formatting program

EDIT:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...loads/seatools
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

[Over Carl]

Have a look for seatools
Its a dos driven floppy that formats even at a low level

Iirc, the version of seatools I have on my work pc is a windows program that checks at low level for dodgy drives but leaves data intact*

* I am quite pissed, can confirm in a few days.

[Northernbloke]

Overcarl - there are 2 versions of Seatools - one for windows and one for DOS - the DOS version has a couple of extra tools/utilities than the windows one - both downloadable freely from the Seagate website

[sniper]

maxtor software I have used in the past is called maxblast

[Northernbloke]

Maxblast was/is the Maxtor software, but other tools such as Seatools do the same job and sometimes a bit more as well - infor from their website

SeaTools



SeaTools for Windows
SeaTools for Windows has replaced SeaTools Online and PowerMax. SeaTools for Windows is a comprehensive, easy-to-use diagnostic tool that helps you quickly determine the condition of the disc drive in your external hard drive, desktop or notebook computer. It includes several tests that will examine the physical media on your Seagate or Maxtor disc drive and any other non-Seagate disc drive.

SeaTools for Windows tests USB, 1394, ATA (PATA/IDE), SATA and SCSI drives. It installs onto your system. SeaTools for Windows is completely data safe.

Note: OneTouch and FreeAgent drive users should use the diagnostic feature built into the OneTouch Manager or FreeAgent software.
(FreeAgent Desktop - use Seatools for Windows.)

• OneTouch II diagnostic instructions.
• OneTouch III diagnostic instructions.
• OneTouch 4 diagnostic instructions.
• FreeAgent Pro diagnostic instructions.
• FreeAgent Go diagnostic instructions.

See the tutorial on the usage of SeaTools for Windows.

Learn more about SeaTools for Windows.

Download SeaTools for Windows now!

SeaTools for DOS
SeaTools for DOS has replaced SeaTools Desktop and PowerMax. SeaTools for DOS can test Seagate or Maxtor Parallel ATA (PATA and IDE) and Serial ATA (SATA) interface disc drives. Because the software boots to its own operating system you can test your drive regardless of the OS installed on it. You can even test a new or completely blank drive. SeaTools for DOS will instruct the drive to run its built in Drive Self Test (DST) and give either a pass or fail status. If you are troubleshooting your disc drive and the DST passes, then you have a good drive!

Learn more about SeaTools for DOS.

See the tutorial on the usage of SeaTools for DOS.

Download SeaTools for DOS now!

[greens117]

hi guys done a format of my comp to win 7 i was using mac drive now the drive dosent show uo ob it becuase its a apple drive ! how do i format the bugger as it willl not show up know ?

[greens117]

hi guys still tryiny with the said external drive loaded a trial with mac drive but when i try to do anything with the said drive like initalize i get a error message ....could not perom because of a i/o device error ?
any ideas ?

[Northernbloke]

1 - Is the BIOS recognising the drive - and if so is it recognising it correctly (model/size etc...)?
2 - If it is being recognised correctly what happens when you load whichever tool you're trying to use to format it?

as I sad on one of my much earlier posts - I'd get a copy of Hirens Boot CD, Start your computer from the Boot CD and select Drive tools then F-Disk, answer yes to the message about enabling large disc support then try viewing the partitions on the drive and deleting them. If you can do that then there's no reason why you can't format the drive.

If you take the housing off the external drive so you can see the drive and it's one of the Western Digital "Green" eco-friendly drives then there may be an issue with the heads not being parked and stuck out of position - I've had this recently on 2 different WD My Book drives (1 x 500GB and 1 x 1TB)and it's apparently a common problem - the only way to fix them apart from getting them replaced by WD is to give a hard, sharp band on one side of the drive and then try it in the computer again - this worked for both the drives I had and I copied the data straight off them then RMA'd the individual drives back to WD - I'd be wary of trusting data on the drive again so bin it or get it exchanged if this is the problem.