Restore hard drive to factory settings?

[Farty]

While formatting my hard drive it stopped at 5% and now it is not recognised by FDISK. It can be seen in the bios but just can't be seen when trying to set it up. :cry:

I've been told that if I reset it back to it factory settings that this will fix my prob, can anyone help me as how to do this or where I can find a prog to do it.

Thanks
Farty

[busterboy]

While formatting my hard drive it stopped at 5% and now it is not recognised by FDISK. It can be seen in the bios but just can't be seen when trying to set it up. :cry:

I've been told that if I reset it back to it factory settings that this will fix my prob, can anyone help me as how to do this or where I can find a prog to do it.

Thanks
Farty


Sounds to me like the HD has gone belly up mate.. :( What was the reason for the format..

Try using a different HD and see what happens.. :)

[DeadKenny]

You might be able to do a low level format, though I think the concept of a low level format doesn't exist these days. Check if there's an option in the bios.

The other possibility is to try fixing the master boot record (fdisk /mbr), but if fdisk can't see the drive at all I'm not too sure.

Tried using NT,2000 or XP though? Dos and Win 9x operating systems (which I presume you're using if using fdisk) are not so good at recognising drives. The NT based operating systems can often see discs even when the bios cannot.

[ian turner]

try checking the manufacturers website for diagnostic/setup utilities

[hacki]

you may try to boot from another hdd and try to format your hdd. Also you may try to format your hdd from *nix system. It may help

[DeadKenny]

A copy of Knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html) on CD could help if you want to try and format from linux. No need to install, just boot of the CD.

There are some bootable recovery discs about too for repairing systems and discs. e.g. http://www.nu2.nu/bootablecd/ (there's now one where you can boot and run a version of XP off CD)