Problem with an HDD

SantiClaws

Senior member
Sep 2, 2000
439
1
81
I just got done cleaning up my machine from a nasty Trojan. Unfortunately, it seems to have affected one of my drives (not system). It is a 1TB SATA drive. It doesn't show up in Device Manager or Disk Manager. However, periodically Windows tells me to format the drive (it refers to it by the drive letter it used to have) if I want to use it. If I OK the format, I get an error message that Windows cannot format the drive (Windows 7). The drive shows up in BIOS.

I suppose it is possible the drive suddenly died, but seems awfully coincidental. Unfortunately, I don't have another machine to test it. Any ideas? TIA
 

Bubbaleone

Golden Member
Nov 20, 2011
1,803
4
76
If that drive was a primay partition it will have had a MBR in addition to the partition table info. The malware has probably damaged the MBR which is why the drive appears inaccessible.

Load the Windows 7 installation disk and select the repair option (lower left corner of install splash screen). In the advanced tools select the command prompt and then open diskpart to run the clean all command on the disk. In Windows you can then use Disk Mangement to partition and format.