I have an old Internal SATA disk which has been sitting on a shelf for at least 3 years. Before that it was not heavily used. I rescued it from a Dell PC, so it has no warranty status on the WD site, and as the PC is now in the rubbish dump, I assume Dell will not help.
I have an external sata disk holder, and when I put the disk in it, Windows seems to recognise it - Easus PM Pro tells me to re-fresh the disk status screen, but it seems to hang there and never completes.
Likewise, DLG Diagnostics (v1.31) does the same.
As it is a 1TB disk, I’m reluctant to dispose of it until I know it is not worth keeping. I there any way to test it at home?
Hi: ColinMacD
Download Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS (current version 5.27)
Follow the instructions to create a bootable USB.
Turn off you computer and remove the sata power connector from all the hard drives.
Connect the hard drive that you think may be defective.
Turn on the computer.
Set your bios to boot from a USB device.
Type dosdlg.exe
Select WRITE ZEROS TO DRIVE and do a full erase.
It should take about 2.5 hrs depending on the computer (2 to 2.5 hours per tera byte).
It not only erases the hard drive but it also checks to see if it is working properly.
if the drive is defective it will come back with an error code that WD support wants for a RMA.
NotaCanada
Thank you very much for the feedback.
I was hoping for something like this.
I’ll probably leave it till the weekend to try it when I have more time
Thanks again. Will let you know the outcome. But at least if I have to dispose of it, I know it is worthless.
Colin
Managed to run the test today at last!
It went exactly as you described so thanks for the excellent instructions.
The drive failed with a “Busy Timeout” 134 error, then 3 times in a row with a “No Drive Found” error 120.
So my drive is useless, but at least I now know that factually.
Thanks again for the help.
Colin
