Hi fellows.

See if someone here can give me advice on this:

I was doing a quick format on an HDD (Seagate if that matters). Because it was taking too long I clicked on cancel. Nothing, it just kept on doing whatever it was doing for about 15 min. A quick format of a 40Gb disk does'nt take that long. Killed the process in Task Manager and rebooted the machine. HDD activity led keeps lit and shows HDD failure message in post. Tried the HDD in other machines with the same results. Another rather expensive paper weight or can I use some utility to revive the thing?

Best regards,
Arnaldo

That sounds pretty bad indeed. I would however definitely check
out SeaTools (Seagate tools to check their own harddisks) to
see what it thinks of your drive. There might even be some sort
of reset or other utility that will wipe the drive to factory state.

Get the tool here: http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

You probably don't want to try to repair it if it has gone bad on you. Its likely to fail again and take out your data with it. I would use the manufacturer's utilities and see if you can get a RMA.

Thank you Rob and Glenn.

Will try your sugestions.

Best regards,
Arnaldo

Glen: that tool IS the manufacturers util, right?

Also since Arnaldo was ALREADY formatting his drive I was
*assuming* any data that *would* still be on there is of no
real concern to him.

Glen: that tool IS the manufacturers util, right?
Yes.

Used the Seagate Tool, but it could'nt resolve some of the bad sectors problems. So, is indeed "kaput".

For now, Seagate leaves a bitter tasted in my mouth since this drive was not much more than a year old, and with little use. Back to Western Digital again.

Thank you for the help provided.

Best regards,
Arnaldo