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Category: Computer Hardware
Wannabe Maxtor HD

I have an old Maxtor hard drive I got for 3$ at a garage sale. It was supposed to be 173 Megabytes (and it is) but when I run fdisk on it it sais: "Formatting 504M" What's happening? Then when it gets pretty far it sais: "Trying to recover allocation unit" And keeps on going. I don't get it. But it's really weird.

The allocation unit message could mean your disk has bad sectors. Did the format finish? You should get some disk utilities from the manufacturer to determine if the disk is any good, and to do a low level format if nothing else works.

hang on... 504M = 504Megabytes?

doesn't that mean its formatting more than it has?

Yup... it's weird. I even check the numbers and found it on the web. The guy was right though. It is 173 megabytes.

Oh well, perhaps you have got extra space free :p

Thats enough for about what, 50 MP3's?

No... I don't have free space... When I finish formatting it it sais something like 500 000 bad clusters found. And it is 173 M by specification. Even when I tried to run scandisk from DOS mode when I was re-installing Win98 on my old computer, about two thirds of it (all at the end) the blocks had the unfamous 'B' on them. So whatever... I don't use it. I'm only booting offa it now.

50 mp3s... I got about 1.5 gigs of music and I'm still not happy!

Sounds to me like the PCA is shafted, let alone what's going on on the platters..

/me peers at his 14GB of mp3
christo

How do I unshaft it? What?


/me peers at his 14GB of mp3

Tsss.... showoff ;)

PCA=Printed circuit assembly, and if its dead, along with other possible damage/problems with the platters themselves, I'd say your hdd is pretty much dead. Good thing it was only $3. :D
(http://www.drlabs.com/oldsite/anatomy.htm for details of the parts of a hdd)

No. I don't have free space. When I finish formatting it says something like 500 000 bad clusters found. And it is 173 M by specification. Even when I tried to run scandisk from DOS mode when I was re-installing Win98 on my old computer, about two thirds of it (all at the end) the blocks had the unfamous 'B' on them. So whatever... I don't use it. I'm only booting offa it now.

50 mp3s. I got about 1.5 gigs of music and I'm still not happy!

from where you got these messages

What? This is an old thread, what are you talking about?










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