[LadyKida]

I have this hard drive that came from an external drive case. It had been corrupted I guess and repaired (I thought) with checkdisk, My computer spent 11 days fixing it. The drive spent a year of the shelf and I just tried installing it as a secondary drive to my computer. The drive showed up and the data while still corrupt was there. When I attempted to reformat the drive it gave me an error(sorry I don't remember what the error said.) and the drive itself vanished from Disk Management. It shows up in the boot setup menu as Unknown. Is there anything I can do to salvage this drive or is it gone for good?

[Triple6]

You should test the hard drive with the Western Digital Diagnostics which you can find here: http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...&sid=3&lang=en

[LadyKida]

If it fails the smart test, does that mean it's scrap?

[crjdriver]

Do the long test not the short or SMART test. This will take a while however it is a much better test of the drive than the short test. If it passes, then you can zero fill the drive. This will put it back to the same condition as new [excepting for physical wear of the drive] You will then need to partition/format the drive before it is usable.

[crjdriver]

BTW a 2TB drive may still be under warranty from WD. You can go to the WD site an input the serial # from the drive. It will tell you if it is still under warranty. You will need the results of the diagnostic test for the warranty so be sure to do the test.

[LadyKida]

Sadly, it's out of warranty. And the extended test fails after a couple minutes with an error in trying to repair bad sectors.

[crjdriver]

Then you have your answer; it has failed.
All drives fail; it is only a question of when your drive will fail. This is just one of the reasons why we stress backups so much.

[LadyKida]

I don't suppose anyone knows where I might find a really cheap hard drive, 80gbs or better for around 25 bucks?

[Triple6]

Originally Posted by LadyKida

I don't suppose anyone knows where I might find a really cheap hard drive, 80gbs or better for around 25 bucks?

eBay, Craig's list, or a local computer store might have old drives they are willing to part with for cheap.

On the other hand $50 gets you a new 320GB drive with warranty, better performance, and way more capacity: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152244