Hard drive woes

[Bristolian]

Hi again folks, seems I only ever post on this forum when I've got a problem

I recently purchased a used hard drive to put into an unused NAS enclosure which has both USB and network connections. Before installing the drive into the enclosure I tried it in my desktop machine just to make sure it was working - no problemo

Having set up the enclosure I connected it to my pc via the USB port and the computer saw it straight away. I decided to format the drive - no real reason for doing this - and after what seemed like an eternity Windows reported that format had failed Now Windows doesn't recognise the drive at all.

If I put the drive back inside the pc it hangs at the Windows splash screen during boot up .... and just hangs there and hangs there and hangs there .....

Am I screwed? Is there any way to recover this drive?

The drive is a 1TB SATA Western Digital Caviar "Green" and I'm running W7 Ultimate (64bit).

 

[RobertP]

bit odd that it stop windows booting when fitted in the PC. That does point to hardware problems. Might be worth checking the boot order in the bios to make sure it is trying to boot from the right drive though I wouldn't have expected to see a windows logo if it wasn't.

maybe try disconnecting all but this suspect drive and boot a windows install DVD to see if it offers to partition and format the drive.

What happens if it is in the NAS box and you connect it via your network and log in to the admin pages using your browser? Can you format the drive through the disk management there?
NAS units usually run a version of linux and have the drive formatted in a linux type format.

 

[neil_g]

all points to an issue with the enclosure id say, what is it?

 

[Bristolian]

bit odd that it stop windows booting when fitted in the PC. That does point to hardware problems. Might be worth checking the boot order in the bios to make sure it is trying to boot from the right drive though I wouldn't have expected to see a windows logo if it wasn't.

maybe try disconnecting all but this suspect drive and boot a windows install DVD to see if it offers to partition and format the drive.

Hmm, I'll give that a try

What happens if it is in the NAS box and you connect it via your network and log in to the admin pages using your browser? Can you format the drive through the disk management there?
NAS units usually run a version of linux and have the drive formatted in a linux type format.

Haven't tried to connect via the network yet. I was going to use the box as a USB device as it's damned slow over the network - cheapo enclosure When I said "unused" in my OP I should have said "unloved" instead

 

[Bristolian]

all points to an issue with the enclosure id say, what is it?

It's an el-cheapo Sumvision Netbox I bought about 18 months ago. It proved to be so slow over the network I took the hard drive out and put it inside my pc. This time around I was going to use it as a USB device.

 

[RobertP]

It proved to be so slow over the network I took the hard drive out and put it inside my pc.

In which case windows will not see it as it will probably be ext2 or ext3 format. You said it makes windows hang while booting which is unusual. If the 'box works as a basic external USB drive you should be able to delete the partitions and make a new simple volume in windows computer management>disk management.