Hard Drive Problems

[Mixxen]

I replaced my neighbor's dead hard drive with a new WD 30GB hard drive. Installed win2k and all his apps and everything ran fine. Then two weeks later the drive got wiped clean...the partition table appeared to be jacked, because I needed to fdisk and reformat drive.

I figured it was probably a virus. So I reinstalled everything and put Norton AV on it. Well, two days later and the drive is wiped clean...again!???

Now, I'm pretty sure the drive is defective free because the WD's diagnostics utility reports no defects.

What could the problem be? Bad power, mb, virus, cable??? BTW he owns a compaq with a celeron 500 and i810 motherboard. Any thoughts and experiences welcomed!

 

[ArchAngel777]

CALL WD explain your problems, they will let you get an RMA without passing that utility test. They have good customer service.. just gotta push them a bit!

 

[Mixxen]

If I RMA the drive, won't it be a while before I get it back? What happens if the drive is not defective? I guess I should call them ...any other ideas?

 

[ArchAngel777]

Well, it depends on the RMA tech.... most likely they will send you a new hard drive.. and then take the other one and put it in a refurb pile if nothing is wrong with it... Nothing to worry about bro.

 

[lowtech1]

I never heard of anything like what you have said befor.
Use this command at prompt if you think it is a MBA virus: FDISK /MBA
Then format & reinstall.

 

[bacillus]

that's an odd one!
when you say the hdd is wiped clean, is it detected properly in bios at startup??

 

[Jiggz]

You need to elaborate on the term "Wiped Clean". Do you mean not a single data can be read on the disk because you cannot access it? Or do you mean it will not boot at all? Or after booting on a boot disk and change directory to C:\ and typed dir there wasn't any and it said 0 files and at the same time showed all the available cluster to be at 30Gb or approx therein?

 

[Mixxen]

The drive is there and working. Bios detects it, but the partition information is destroyed, thus I need to fdisk the drive then reformat.

lowtech, wouldn't norton AV catch the virus, or is it stealthy or something.

I just finished writing zeros to the whole drive. Now I will reinstalling everything, then ghost the drive...but I have a feeling this will happen again

BTW, wiped clean, meaning the computer cannot boot and files cannot be accessed because the partition info is gone.