622 killed my Ext HD

[brad1138]

I just got a 500 gig ext HD. Called Dish, activated service, my 622 formatted the drive. I started archiving a few videos after about 5 mins of watching tv/accessing menu the activity light stopped and the 622 locked up. I had no choice but to do a FPR. When it came back up I checked and the files I was moving were still on 622, tried to start archiving again and it said I needed to reformat HD to dish spec. tried that and it failed twice. I noticed that while it was transferring content the 622 was very sluggish. Any ideas? I am going to try to reformat the HD with my computer (I run Ubuntu Linux).

 

[Dirtydan]

What is the brand of your ehd?

 

[brad1138]

What is the brand of your ehd?

It's a Western Digital. I hooked it up to my computer, Linux couldn't mount the drive, so I booted into XP. In Disk Manager I was able to delete the partitions. But the 622 failed the format again, then I deleted the partitions and tried to format it through XP but it got all the way to 100% and then said it couldn't complete the formatting. I think either the Case or Drive is now bad, will have to send it back to New Egg. I do think the 622 killed it though. It formatted fine the first time.

One thing though, it only took about 1-2 mins to finish formatting the first time. That seemed a bit quick, how long should the 622 take to format a 500gig drive?

Thanks,
Brad

 

[dfergie]

Usually takes about 5 minutes to format and for 622 to reboot in my experiences... (on 3rd drive now)

 

[RickDee]

Probably a defective drive.

I seriously doubt the 622 damaged your hard drive. All the 622 does is partitions and formats the drive to Linux.

Hard drives fail and it's a pain in the butt when one does, but all you can do is RMA it for a replacement.

 

[Sean Mota]

I have three drives already and am considering a 4th. I haven't had any problems with the drives. Although none of them are WD.

 

[David_Levin]

There are low level drive functions (like reading SMART), that can't be accessed through the USB interface.....

If you want to try and recover, you'd need to pull the drive out of the box and run the Western Digital Diagnostics. If the drive is visible, run the long/short tests and zero the boot sectors before reformatting.

It's not impossible for the drive to have gone bad. Fortunately, new defective drives generally fail pretty quickly. I often fill a new drive as a general test before trusting it.

Western Digital has a decent Vista compatible diag program. You can give it a try, but it seems unable to access SMART through the USB interface.

Of course, if you're box is under warranty, you probably don't want to break the seal.

 

[brad1138]

My problem now is that I bought a 500 gig drive and ext case separately, have to figure out which part is bad. Also how Long has the 622 taken to format similar size drives? I will pull it apart and try some of the low level formatting software from WD etc.

Thanks,
Brad

 

[KAB]

Also how Long has the 622 taken to format similar size drives? I will pull it apart and try some of the low level formatting software from WD etc.

Thanks,
Brad

Mine took 5 minutes or less.

 

[8bitbytes]

My problem now is that I bought a 500 gig drive and ext case separately, have to figure out which part is bad. Also how Long has the 622 taken to format similar size drives? I will pull it apart and try some of the low level formatting software from WD etc.

Thanks,
Brad

If you can plug the drive into a pc, you can test it, but I would bet on the external enclosure being bad. Since you are buying from New Egg, the RMA will be easy and they sell Eagle Consus enclosures there. These enclosures seem to be working well so far.

 

[brad1138]

If you can plug the drive into a pc, you can test it, but I would bet on the external enclosure being bad.

Well I hooked the HD up to my computer and the sata controller, bios & XP don't even see it, I guess I got a bad HD. I have no way of knowing if the SATA part of my MB is good because this is my 1st SATA drive but I'll assume it is.

Thanks,
Brad

 

[David_Levin]

Check out my post here. It took me 3 attempts to find an SATA enclosure that worked with the 622:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/1069474-post49.html

I'm still a bit surprised by the dead drive. You plugged it directly into a PC SATA port? You gave it power? Is the drive spinning up?

Also, check your bios/advanced settings. Make sure the SATA ports are enabled. Also, double check your motherboard manual. The SATA could be either on the Southbridge, or on a secondary HDD controller chip hanging on the PCI bus (like a Promise).

If it's on a secondary chip the bios settings will be in a different place.