On May 18, 8:10*pm, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

What kills drives is turning them on and off repeatedly. *I have
machines where the drive is running 24x7, and they last many years. *I
have an ancient Conner 1GB 1060S drive running in my SCO Unix 3.2v4.2
server since about 1985 without difficulties.

In 85 that would be a humongous sized drive. Sounds like a record in
the making, if not already...


Or XP setup didn't recognize it, because it did show up correctly and
quickly on the startup screen as the
system *booted

OK. *The BIOS recognizes the drive, but Windoze does not.

Ok, that was approximately the situation before I deleted the non-NTFS
partitions - after deleting those partitions
it just sits there when the machine is turned on, it spins up but
there are no sounds of the heads
seeking anything, and the bios finally times out and says there is
nothing on the IDE channel it's plugged
into - it just sits there, brick-like...

*There's
a chance that the drive can be revived if you wipe it clean.

Ah, there is still hope, then, I'll see if those programs will touch
it like it is.

Try one of the numerous disk wipe type of programs.
http://www.dban.org/about *(what I use)
http://www.diskwipe.org
Stuff in the Windoze XP CD and boot it. *It should ask to partition
and format the disk. *After it's done, it will install XP. *Much
easier with a clean HD.

Try Seatools and see if it finds anything:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools
It probably won't if the BIOS can't find it, but it's still possible.

I tried a couple different versions of Seatools, I guess when the bios
doesn't see it, other programs can't either.

Make up your mind please.

Sorry for the confusion - what I mean is that after the drive became
brick-like,
I tried out Seatools 1.09 and 3.04 with the drive plugged in but
undetected,
and neither version was able to see the drive.

*When you go into the CMOS setup, does the
drive show up and is it correctly identified as an ST340810A drive?

No, not any more
if so, the BIOS sees it. *If not, it's dead.

So far it's RIP ded.

Thanks again,
Mike