How to low-level format entire drive, including partition map?

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Level 1

5 points

How to low-level format entire drive, including partition map?

Hi everyone,

I have an OWC-supplied, 80 GB, ATA hard drive (OWC Neptune), which originally shipped in an external, FireWire 400 case. The drive stopped working; disassembly of the case led to the discovery of a burned trace on the Oxford bridge. While the bare drive itself has no manufacturer name, its label style and model number listed on the drive clearly show it to be a Maxtor 6Y080L0, 80 GB.

Having removed the drive and installed it into a test Power Mac G4, the physical drive is recognized by Disk Utility (albeit with no partitions, mounted or otherwise). The drive emits "normal" power and spin-up sounds, with no clicking or other sounds that might normally indicate a failed drive. However, Disk Utility is unable to actually partition the drive—when attempted, the "Creating Partition" progress bar advances to about 1/8 of the way across, then moves no further (even if many hours are allowed to pass). Console reveals nothing as to what is stopping the format.

Moving further, I attempted to blow away the partition map with pdisk, but encountered several read errors in the partition map itself. I even went so far as to attempt to "build" a partition map, one partition at a time, based on the settings I found on an identical drive that is functioning properly. Although this seemed semi-successful, attempting to write the partition table again resulted in a couple of errors.

pdisk: Unable to write block 8 (Input/output error)
pdisk: Unable to write block 9 (Input/output error)
pdisk: Unable to write block 10 (Input/output error)
pdisk: Unable to write block 11 (Input/output error)

While it's entirely possible that the blown component on the FireWire bridge might have also taken out the drive, I'm not a big believer in coincidence and my thought is that the trace blew during an access of the partition map, corrupting it to the point that only a low-level format of that portion of the drive can potentially salvage it. There is no data on the hard drive I am worried about losing, but I'm not one to easily say "die" and so I'd like to be able to restore this drive to functionality, if at all possible.

So after setting the table for you here, my questions are as follows:

1. Is there any way to low-level format an entire drive that does not have a readable partition map? In essence, effectively returning the drive to something resembling an out-of-box, unformatted state? CLI is fine, and I'm even open to trying to throw the thing in a PC box, install Yellow Dog Linux so as to have GUI access to pdisk, etc.

2. Does anyone have any other suggestions for me regarding this matter?

Thanks much for the time,
MBJ

Posted on Oct 22, 2006 6:48 PM

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Answer 1

Andreas

Level 4

1,510 points

Oct 22, 2006 7:05 PM in response to Mac/PC 911

I hate to sound sanctimonious, but my best wish for you is that you DON'T succeed in fixing that drive. No amount of $ would tempt me to ever use it with that history. My concern is that if you did 'fix' it you might save something you value to it.

Please don't use that drive as your only clone/backup. Consider this: with only one clone, at the time of (re-)cloning you actually have NO backup – a power outage, bad spike, whatever, and it is possible that source and target are hosed at the same time: likely? No. Impossible? Also no.

Moderator, forums.bombich.com

G5 2.1GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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Answer 2

lkrupp

Level 6

14,320 points

Oct 22, 2006 7:44 PM in response to Mac/PC 911

Use Disk Utility to erase the drive. Under security options select Zero Out Data. This will reformat the drive and map out any bad sectors. You should then be able to re-partition the drive as you desire. I know this works because I used it to resurrect a Western Digital drive that went belly-up. But, like the previous poster, I wouldn't trust this drive for any important data.

Dual 2.5GHz G5 Power Macintosh Mac OS X (10.4.8) 1.5GB RAM 20" Apple Cinema Display

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Answer 3

Mac/PC 911 Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 23, 2006 9:40 AM in response to lkrupp

Hello there,

I appreciate the comments, and no, it's not a drive I'd use for anything "reliable"--again, this is an exercise on my part, as I'd like to see if I have The Awesome™ enough to be able to restore the drive to a functional state.

My efforts so far seem to be exacerbating the problem, as I can now only get an input/output error in Disk Utility when attempting to zero all data. A command line attempt to zeroDisk with diskutil did not error, but it finished in about 3 seconds. Attempts to do a sector edit with Drive Genius go nowhere, nor does DG allow me to reset the partition map (although interestingly, a Scan with DG does seem to proceed well-past the first blocks on the drive—I stopped the scan after an hour or so (no errors had been reported to that point), as a full sector scan would seem to need about 57 days to complete and I'm not that patient. I even tried to put the drive into a PC case and go with fdisk off of a Win98 floppy, but also with no luck.

My last-ditch effort at this point would be to see if there's some way I can setup the partition map such that any bad sectors in the current boot blocks are bypassed, but I'm not sure this is possible (esp. as pdisk keeps wanting to error when reading the existing partition map).

Again: This is an exercise, so I'm happy to try any and all pertinent advice you might be able to offer. The drive was a gift ("it's yours if you can make it work"), and I had no data of import on it anyway, but it would be nice to be able to say that the system didn't beat me here. 😉

Here's hoping for more suggestions!

Thanks again,
MBJ

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Answer 4

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Oct 23, 2006 10:36 AM in response to Mac/PC 911

OWC Neptune = nice looking, but also not the best cooling enclosure, and led to a fried drive. And all the low level also can cause a drive to run significantly hotter.

If I want to remove all partitions, set the drive to 100% free space and erase/zero. SoftRAID 3.5+ is nice, you can zero the first and last 100 sectors which is also effective, or ask the drive to write zeroes.

The only thing you haven't tried is the freezer bag and hope to get 15 minutes of run time to do a quick format.

You've convinced me to avoid those Neptune drives 😉

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Answer 5

Oct 23, 2006 11:13 AM in response to Mac/PC 911

I'd suggest going to Maxtor's web site and downloading their PowerMax diagnostic software. You will have to put the drive in a windows machine to use their software (you download PowerMax, install it on a windows bootable floppy, and then boot from that).

Note though that a user performed low level format is an unreliable thing (most hard drive manufacturers do not offer such capabilities anymore), as it is impossible to properly control temperature and humidity during the (lengthy!) process. That kind of clean room control is really essential for low level formatting of modern, high data-density drives.

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Answer 6

Oct 23, 2006 5:32 PM in response to Mac/PC 911

Have you tried seeing what SMART is reporting? You can get this from Disk Utility or smarttools or the like.

Granted, this is not 100% accurate, but if the drive itself is reporting it is non-functional you will just be wasting your time trying to resurrect it.

Just a thought from the peanut gallery.

Matt

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Answer 7

Mac/PC 911 Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 28, 2006 10:00 AM in response to Mac/PC 911

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I'm about to give up on it, although I will try the PowerMax software recommended by Michael Black.

And The hatter: Don't let this burn you on Neptune drives—one of my client offices has been using about 20 of them for the past couple of years now, on a daily basis, for large-scale imaging projects, and the little drives have been real champs. We're even using them to dual-boot both Intel- and PPC-based systems, and they've just been outstanding. Methinks the component failure probably cascaded down to the drive, and while yes, it *****, such things happen in any batch of components and I'd buy another Neptune today if I had the need for yet another external.

As for Matt Broughton: S.M.A.R.T. shows no problems when the drive is connected directly to the ATA bus. But then again, I've only run into a few drives that S.M.A.R.T. has ever reliably reported on—it's still a black art, to be sure. The WikiPedia article on S.M.A.R.T. goes into more detail about its pervasive flakiness.

For now, the drive has begun to beep about once every 2 seconds at boot. This lasts for about 30 seconds, after which the drive continues to spin but no further beeping is heard. The drive no longer shows up in Disk Utility, even as an unmounted drive/volume. So, I'll probably try it in a PC w/PowerMax just to say that I did, but beyond that, it's probably ready for disassembly as an example drive.

80 GB—sniffle… 😉

Thanks again to all for your suggestions!

Take care,
MBJ

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