Can I "reset" a WD 120 drive to factory

[mrreizor]

I had a WD 120 GB drive in a NASlite PC. However, I realised that I didn't use it enough to leave it powered on 24/7. The drive was formatted in ext2 in NASlite and the drive detected no errors using SMART technology with the NASlite software.

I ran the WD diagnostics floppy and the tests came back as a good drive. However, when i put that drive in my desktop pc as a Primary slave, the BIOS detected it to be like a 48GB drive and the name is totally bogus (instead of WD1200*, it shows 'aaaaaaaa'). I tried to get it to boot up so I could fix it within XP, but it wouldn't boot past the BIOS screen. I've seen this before but I can't remember how to fix it.

Any ideas? I'm sure the drive works fine. I just need to get it to detect normally.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Might be you have a bad cable or connector, or just need to reseat it. Having incorrect information being shown by the BIOS for the drive means it's not communicating properly with the drive.

There's no way to "reset" anything within the drive. You can run the utilities to zero fill the drive, but that's just wiping out the data on the platters.

I assume your desktop has a mainboard that can support large drives.

 

[MichaelD]

Using the WD diagnostic utility, do a low-level format on the drive.

 

[mrreizor]

I have used this same cable/HD with a previous motherboard. This new board is a newer model so i'm sure it can support large drives. I'll swap cables, but I have a hunch that it's something else. Definitely won't hurt to try. Thanks for the idea.

I think it has to do with it being formatted with ext2. I put this drive in another pc, booted with a 98SE boot disk, ran fdisk and it couldn't locate it. Is there an fdisk type program for ext2 partitions?

 

[MichaelD]

I thought you wanted to load XP on the drive? If so, you cannot have any other formatting except NTFS or FAT32. You want to use NTFS, BTW.

Your 98 boot disk doesn't see the drive b/c it will only see FAT/NTFS/DOS partitions...not any flavor of UNIX/LINUX/whatever.

 

[Lord Evermore]

To be clear, you can have other partition types and formats than NTFS/FAT32 on the drive, you just can't install Windows to it, naturally, and if there isn't any free space, then obviously Windows can't put its own partition in.

Windows XP should be able to remove the old partition, if you could get it to boot.

The partitioning and formatting however have nothing to do with what the BIOS reads from the firmware.

 

[mrreizor]

Sorry for the confusion...

I already have XP loaded on that machine. I want to add the 120 GB drive to that same machine for storage only. But in the state its in now, it won't boot if the drive is hooked up to the primary slave. Take out the drive, the pc boots normally.

 

[bruceb]

It sounds like you need to remove the old Boot Loader Sector from your WD120 Drive
Not sure how to do that in Linux

 

[corkyg]

Use WD's HDD utility - bootable - and do a complete low level format of the drive and start over.

 

[imported_shader]

you probably need to switch the jumpers on the drive. i have a wd drive that does very similar. if you put the jumper for CS (cable select) it will detect properly when it is alone on the bus (i.e. no other drives plugged in on that cord), but when i plug another drive in, the other drive gets detected, but the wd drive does not. the way i get it to work is to jump it to slave and then it works. so it seems like master and cable select will work if it is the only thing on the cable, if you have more than one drive then you will have to use master or slave. i would try switching the jumpers around until you find one that works.

 

[mrreizor]

Originally posted by: shader
you probably need to switch the jumpers on the drive. i have a wd drive that does very similar. if you put the jumper for CS (cable select) it will detect properly when it is alone on the bus (i.e. no other drives plugged in on that cord), but when i plug another drive in, the other drive gets detected, but the wd drive does not. the way i get it to work is to jump it to slave and then it works. so it seems like master and cable select will work if it is the only thing on the cable, if you have more than one drive then you will have to use master or slave. i would try switching the jumpers around until you find one that works.

I changed the jumper from CS to Slave and that fixed the weird detection in BIOS. I partially installed XP on the drive to clear the ext2 partition.

Thanks for the tips guys!