Hard disk failure and security lock

Ive mentioned the Western digital 80 gig WD800 5400 rpm in another
post. It was running in an eMachines , about 1.5 years or less old and
it suddenly wouldnt boot.

I tried to reformat it which worked but it seemed like the IDE cables
were really screwed , causing many problems even with other HDs I
tried it with. But at the time I didnt quite grasp the fact and tried
reformatting it which worked but it seemed to (I could be wrong about
this) corrupt the format , creating an unrecogniable format or
something. The HD still is recognized by the system and WD lifeguard
OKs it under Quick Test , but it constantly kicks it out of extended
test and writing zeroes to Hard Disk /Low level format.

It gives a 0550 error code which supposedly means re-test it.

I see that in DataLifeGuard is has a thing that says under disk status
"Security : Locked" . Does that mean anything? I tried searching and I
did see something about software used to lock a hard disk - is that
relevant at all?

At this point Ive tried SpinRite and Ultimate Boot Disk utils etc and
this HD seems like a lost cause. Its a shame cause its not that old
and it does seem to be recognized and spin up and some progs seem to
think theres a strange partition/format on it though it may just be
seriously screwed - a lost cause.

If you post some more info on the system you are using, I'm sure we
could help.

Could you tell us:

1: What OS you are using to format this disk? (DOS, WIN98,XP....)
2: How your dive is hocked up to the Main Bord? (Master with no
slave...)
3: Are you using a 80 wire or a traditional 40 wire IDE Cable?
4: Do you know if your power supply is working ok and not under
rated?
5: Have you tryed to delete the old partition to make a new one?

On 8 Dec 2004 22:01:53 -0500,
lid (Trigger_Happy)
wrote:

If you post some more info on the system you are using, I'm sure we
could help.

Could you tell us:

1: What OS you are using to format this disk? (DOS, WIN98,XP....)
2: How your dive is hocked up to the Main Bord? (Master with no
slave...)
3: Are you using a 80 wire or a traditional 40 wire IDE Cable?
4: Do you know if your power supply is working ok and not under
rated?
5: Have you tryed to delete the old partition to make a new one?

I gave up. I came across some threads where people have said for some
reason that the Security Lock feature somehow was tuned on and it was
impossible to access the disk. I maybe wrong but that seems to have
happened with the WD. It was in WIn XP Pro on a emachines. The advice
given was send it to WD for a fee and they then can fix it etc but
then might as well buy a new one as cheap as they are. Ive bought two
recently in fact 60 gig Maxtors for people. I ended up giving a
smaller 40 gig HD I had to the person.

Boy you can never have too many small sized hard disks or mem sticks
laying around.


I had another dumb problem too - lots of them lately. One of my other
PCs I took it off the machine and formatted it as a D: drive on my
main machine after it was acting a bit wonky and I found viruses etc
on it. I then tried to repartition and format it as the main HD on the
other PC and it kept saying "Error Loading OS" . I finally had to do
a low format to fix it.

Now Im getting graphics weirdness on both of my formerly rock stable
PCs - Nvidia 6800 and 400mx on a another. Sure I can easily explain
away the 6800 since its fairly new as buggy. But whats happening with
the 400mx which was super rock solid before? Not only are games like
Sponge Bob the Movie Game screwed up but the built in screen saver for
WIN XP the flying windows is screwed up too. Theres something very
strange going on.

Are the new Nvidia drivers screwy ? Its not massive - most things work
but there are lots of small things that are really screwed up. Nows
the time I wish I had even MORE systems with different cards.

My ATI 9800 and 400mx used to be rock solid except for that fact the
ATIs just cant play some kids games - Jimmy Neutron etc.

Now Im seeing weirdness here and there making two systems seem like
they are unpredictable.