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Hard drive format error

post #1 of 6
9/16/06 at 5:19pm
Thread Starter 
I have a 2.5" external Hard drive that I took out of a notebook. I put it in an enclosure. It works fine and everthing.

I went to go format and clear the drive, but when I went to go do this the format recieved an error and could not format. So I closed it out and tried another way to format it. It failed again. I unplugged it from the computer and then plugged it back in.

Windows made a "Beep" sound. So I know it found something, but the thing is that I cannot see it in explorer. I cannot see it in disk management. I cannot find it in device manager.

But I know windows found something. And now I cant try and format it to use it.

Help please
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post #2 of 6
9/17/06 at 12:51am
If you cant format then plug the HD back into the laptop, run dells PSA test (F12 and diagnostics upon post screen) and wait for the HD to fail. get error code, call dell, get hard drive replacement.
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post #3 of 6
9/22/06 at 12:56am
Where were you trying to format it from, the text-mode portion of XP setup?
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post #4 of 6
9/22/06 at 11:05am
Thread Starter 
No the disk management. and I also tried to format it from the my computer window. Both didnt work
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post #5 of 6
9/22/06 at 2:34pm
how about another external housing?

cheers ...
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post #6 of 6
9/22/06 at 8:40pm
If you have a a copy of Windows, try loading it up and formatting it in there, or even seeing if it's listed in there as unpartitioned space. Antoher is to load the recovery console or botting a 98 system disk and checking it with the FDISK utility.

Another option is to run a linux distro's livecd and see if it recognizes it there. If neither of those show anything, it's probably the housing, as qhn suggests, or the hard drive has failed in one manner or another.
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