Failing secondary hard drive

I have a Pocketec DATASTOR USB 2.0 40GB secondary hard drive that has been
working fine until just recently. The first sign of trouble was a delayed
write failure message and now Windows XP loops while booting when the drive
is turned on. If the drive is off or turned off during the boot, the boot
then proceeds without incident but the drive isn't recognized when powered on
after the boot. If the drive is on when Windows is shut down, the system
loops in RUNDLL32.EXE until the drive is powered off.

This seems like a hardware problem with the drive but I would like to try
reformatting the drive. Since Windows won't recognize it, is there an
alternative method for wiping it or reformatting it?
--

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beetle wrote:

I have a Pocketec DATASTOR USB 2.0 40GB secondary hard drive that has been
working fine until just recently. The first sign of trouble was a delayed
write failure message and now Windows XP loops while booting when the drive
is turned on. If the drive is off or turned off during the boot, the boot
then proceeds without incident but the drive isn't recognized when powered on
after the boot. If the drive is on when Windows is shut down, the system
loops in RUNDLL32.EXE until the drive is powered off.

This seems like a hardware problem with the drive but I would like to try
reformatting the drive. Since Windows won't recognize it, is there an
alternative method for wiping it or reformatting it?

Download a drive diagnostic utility from the driver manufacturer's web
site. This normally creates a boot floppy from which the diagnostics
are run.

Another option is Spinrite, v.6 from Gibson Research. I used it in the
Win9x days on FAT drives and it was an excellent utility. When NTFS
came out Spinrite couldn't work on that file system. They just released
their first version that works on NTFS. It is pricey unless you can do
an upgrade from an older version.

Thanx...I have opened a technical support query with www.pocketec.net. I'm
hoping that something simple like a DOS reformat may get the drive going
again but it was making some unusual clunking noises just before it quit...
:-(

beetle wrote:


Thanx...I have opened a technical support query with www.pocketec.net. I'm
hoping that something simple like a DOS reformat may get the drive going
again but it was making some unusual clunking noises just before it quit...
:-(

Good luck and post back with the outcome.

I had an old (as yet unused) copy of SpinRite v5.0 around and so I upgraded
to v6.0. The configuration of SpinRite was tested on a working IOMEGA ZIP
drive using the Cypress DUSE 4.2 USB driver from pocketec and it exercised
the drive as expected. When the DATASTOR was plugged into the same
configuration for a test, SpinRite hung attempting to read sector zero. It
would not respond until the drive was powered off (same behaviour as Windows
during bootup).

If the drive is in an totally inaccessible state such as this, I guess my
question becomes: "If a removable hard drive is going to be taken in for
warranty service or exchange and it cannot be addressed from any
user-interface hardware level, how does one ensure that it is wiped clean to
remove any potentially sensitive information that may be accessible by other
means?"

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:45:04 -0700, beetle
wrote:

I had an old (as yet unused) copy of SpinRite v5.0 around and so I upgraded
to v6.0. The configuration of SpinRite was tested on a working IOMEGA ZIP
drive using the Cypress DUSE 4.2 USB driver from pocketec and it exercised
the drive as expected. When the DATASTOR was plugged into the same
configuration for a test, SpinRite hung attempting to read sector zero. It
would not respond until the drive was powered off (same behaviour as Windows
during bootup).

If the drive is in an totally inaccessible state such as this, I guess my
question becomes: "If a removable hard drive is going to be taken in for
warranty service or exchange and it cannot be addressed from any
user-interface hardware level, how does one ensure that it is wiped clean to
remove any potentially sensitive information that may be accessible by other
means?"

The condition of the removable Zip drive has nothing at all to do with
data which resides on the removable media. (Zip disks) Why would you
send the media along with the drive for repair? You did state above
- "If a removable hard drive......"

As for a non removable hard drive, if it can't be accessed at all and
has to be sent in for repair, you will either have to trust the repair
facility or not have the drive repaired.

CS wrote:

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:45:04 -0700, beetle
wrote:


I had an old (as yet unused) copy of SpinRite v5.0 around and so I upgraded
to v6.0. The configuration of SpinRite was tested on a working IOMEGA ZIP
drive using the Cypress DUSE 4.2 USB driver from pocketec and it exercised
the drive as expected. When the DATASTOR was plugged into the same
configuration for a test, SpinRite hung attempting to read sector zero. It
would not respond until the drive was powered off (same behaviour as Windows
during bootup).

If the drive is in an totally inaccessible state such as this, I guess my
question becomes: "If a removable hard drive is going to be taken in for
warranty service or exchange and it cannot be addressed from any
user-interface hardware level, how does one ensure that it is wiped clean to
remove any potentially sensitive information that may be accessible by other
means?"


The condition of the removable Zip drive has nothing at all to do with
data which resides on the removable media. (Zip disks) Why would you
send the media along with the drive for repair? You did state above
- "If a removable hard drive......"

As for a non removable hard drive, if it can't be accessed at all and
has to be sent in for repair, you will either have to trust the repair
facility or not have the drive repaired.

He's talking about an external 40gb hard drive.

beetle wrote:

I had an old (as yet unused) copy of SpinRite v5.0 around and so I upgraded
to v6.0. The configuration of SpinRite was tested on a working IOMEGA ZIP
drive using the Cypress DUSE 4.2 USB driver from pocketec and it exercised
the drive as expected. When the DATASTOR was plugged into the same
configuration for a test, SpinRite hung attempting to read sector zero. It
would not respond until the drive was powered off (same behaviour as Windows
during bootup).

If the drive is in an totally inaccessible state such as this, I guess my
question becomes: "If a removable hard drive is going to be taken in for
warranty service or exchange and it cannot be addressed from any
user-interface hardware level, how does one ensure that it is wiped clean to
remove any potentially sensitive information that may be accessible by other
means?"

That is a problem. Since you can't read it and can't write the data is
there for someone to retrieve if they want to.

"Rock" wrote:

That is a problem. Since you can't read it and can't write the data is
there for someone to retrieve if they want to.

For a mere $2275.00 Data-Link offers an HD-1 Hard Drive/All media Degausser
but using it guarantees that the hard drive will NEVER be reusable again.
That might void the warranty...

This beastie has two possible settings for drawing power: USB and EXT. It has
always been set to EXT with a supplemental power cord into a PS/2 port since
USB alone did not provide sufficient juice to make it run. By deliberately
setting it to USB it went into a marginal state and didn't work (as expected)
but at least it showed some activity. Now when it is set back to EXT it is
mountable by Windows once again. Perhaps the particular sequence of errors
wedged it in some anomalous state that even POWER OFF didn't fix?? I'll try
SpinRite again...

The DATASTOR drive is back in production mode without any apparent loss of
data. I have changed the cabling sequence to place it directly into a laptop
USB port along with the supplemental power cord. Previously it was one hub
level away from the laptop. This may have been ok for normal activity but
under error recovery conditions the unit may have gone into a marginal power
state that POWER OFF wouldn't clear.

beetle wrote:

The DATASTOR drive is back in production mode without any apparent loss of
data. I have changed the cabling sequence to place it directly into a laptop
USB port along with the supplemental power cord. Previously it was one hub
level away from the laptop. This may have been ok for normal activity but
under error recovery conditions the unit may have gone into a marginal power
state that POWER OFF wouldn't clear.




Great, glad you got it fixed and thanks for posting back.