Has anyone tried a recovery utility called FLOBO ?

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I have a 750G Seagate 7200.11 firmware SD1A model # ST3750330A. I had a PSU go bad and when it did it took the hard drive with it. Now it fails the SeaTools Short test, Long Test, and every other test on SeaTools.
The drive will spin up and my other computers see it when connected externally and say it is healthy but needs to be formatted but when I try to format it that fails too.
In my research to see if I could fix the drive I ran across the utility FLOBO that is suppose to fix bad sectors. Has anyone used this utility? Is it worth the money ? Have I got a 750G paper weight ? 🙁

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There is no fix to bad sectors, only reallocation if the bad ones aren’t readily readable…and aren’t populating ongoing.
If it fails the easy test (SeaTools Short) I would say its bad as that picks up on more evident errors, whereas the long test would be more the bad sectors test.

If you want to fool around with it for giggles, you can try rewriting the partition table with GParted or Win 7 in disk management (change it to GPT and back to MBR again) and then try splitting it into partitions and trying to format (full) separate partitions. I was able to eventually map out 12.5 gigs of bad disk this way and am still using the other 145 gigs to this day, but of course I don’t trust it with anything critical.

Otherwise I would just tear it apart, make coasters out of the platters and fridge mags out of the magnets.

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There is no fix to bad sectors, only reallocation if the bad ones aren’t readily readable…and aren’t populating ongoing.
If it fails the easy test (SeaTools Short) I would say its bad as that picks up on more evident errors, whereas the long test would be more the bad sectors test.

If you want to fool around with it for giggles, you can try rewriting the partition table with GParted or Win 7 in disk management (change it to GPT and back to MBR again) and then try splitting it into partitions and trying to format (full) separate partitions. I was able to eventually map out 12.5 gigs of bad disk this way and am still using the other 145 gigs to this day, but of course I don’t trust it with anything critical.

Otherwise I would just tear it apart, make coasters out of the platters and fridge mags out of the magnets.

Thanks for the reply. How am I suppose to partition the bad sectors if I can’t format the disk ?

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Run checkdisk with the “R” switch enable from a bootable disk prior to another format attempt.
Expect it to run for several hours.

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How am I suppose to partition the bad sectors if I can’t format the disk ?

Need to delete any partitions already there if you can, then as mentioned, convert to GPT and back to MBR if in W7 to rewrite the partition table or use GParted live disc to rewrite it.
Then need to remake multiple evenly distributed partitions if you can (up to 4 primary to start); and then see if any one of them will format.

If you cannot even make partitions then of course the format step is a no go.

Perhaps chkdsk repair will sort it though it sounds like that is going to hang as well but you gotta give it like a day or so to know; longer is probably unreasonable.

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Need to delete any partitions already there if you can, then as mentioned, convert to GPT and back to MBR if in W7 to rewrite the partition table or use GParted live disc to rewrite it.
Then need to remake multiple evenly distributed partitions if you can (up to 4 primary to start); and then see if any one of them will format.

If you cannot even make partitions then of course the format step is a no go.

Perhaps chkdsk repair will sort it though it sounds like that is going to hang as well but you gotta give it like a day or so to know; longer is probably unreasonable.

This is the error I get with the drive hooked up externally. “The request could not be performed because of an I/O devise error”.

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Here is a screen shot of what the computer sees

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What options do you have available when you right click on the Disk 1 Basic… square just to the left of the graphic depiction of the raw space on the drive?

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I have a Maxtor 500GB drive which if connected directly to the motherboard will prevent a normal startup due to a SMART failure. However, if I put it in an external housing and connect it via USB I get no such warnings so personally, I would be *extremely* sceptical about what a USB interface reports.

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These are the options I get.

29309-seagate750b

29308-seagate750a

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You should get the following options if you right click on the little square to the left of the drive space graphic representation. I don’t get the convert to MBR because its already MBR so you might see that as well.

If that is where you are right clicking and resulting in the first image (second one is right clicking on the the partition/raw space itself which isn’t what you want) then its not going to work in Windows 7 so you may need to use GParted or another partition program to see if you can write a new partition table to the drive.

29321-Image1

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You should get the following options if you right click on the little square to the left of the drive space graphic representation. I don’t get the convert to MBR because its already MBR so you might see that as well.

If that is where you are right clicking and resulting in the first image (second one is right clicking on the the partition/raw space itself which isn’t what you want) then its not going to work in Windows 7 so you may need to use GParted or another partition program to see if you can write a new partition table to the drive.

29321-Image1

These are the same options I get also. GPT is grayed out. So when I tried to change the partition to dynamic I get ” The operation is not supported by the object”

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So it looks to me then that the MBR info is there and reading some sort of partitioning exists, therefor GPT is greyed out, but any action directed to the disk errors out.

The only thing left in my bag of tricks is to use a boot disc of Parted Magic, which contains GParted that I’ve been mentioning, and force the rewrite of the dos-type partition table (MBR). It will either do it, or if it doesn’t, I think the drive might be a goner as all previous tests seem to indicate.

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This is what I found over on techarena.com. This is where I also found some info about flobo. As you can see from the attachments that I posted the computer sees most of the hard drive so that tells me that the drive is working and is physically ok. At least the drive is not in pieces.
I was hoping someone here had tried Spinrite, HDD REgenerator, or Flobo before I drop 70 or 80 dollars for software to fix 750g paper weight.

http://forums.techarena.in/hardware-peripherals/1092536.htm
Anyway thanks for all the help

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Pops,

Why didn’t you say so…I’ve been using Spinrite for literally decades! It’s very good at cleaning up drives but be warned on large drives it can run for days, literally! It all depends on the CPU/MB/Drive combo and how well they match up and how many problems Spinrite finds and has to fix. Unfortunately, with the current price of a new drive it is hardly worth buying Spinrite when you can get a new drive for the same or less money. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Pops,

Why didn’t you say so…I’ve been using Spinrite for literally decades! It’s very good at cleaning up drives but be warned on large drives it can run for days, literally! It all depends on the CPU/MB/Drive combo and how well they match up and how many problems Spinrite finds and has to fix. Unfortunately, with the current price of a new drive it is hardly worth buying Spinrite when you can get a new drive for the same or less money. :cheers:

I thought I did but maybe not. The computer that the drive was in was used by my Grand kids for school and games. There was no important data on the drive and I had planed to up grade it to Windows 7 this Christmas for them but the PSU went down. When I built the computer I put 2 HDDs in it. The 750g and a 1 TB, both were in removal trays, Kingwin mobile racks. The 1 TB was shut off when the PSU went down. Both drives were clones of each other with XP SP3, ABit motherboard, and Intel 3.0 single core processor. With a new 450w PSU it seams to be running fine. When the PSU went down it took the 750g sata HDD and the mobile rack with it.

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Sure the drive could be ok but then there’s firmware problems that sometimes crop up and controller board problems…which sector reallocation won’t help. I have a 2 TB drive that seems fine…but it just won’t work properly, it was $70 to replace, so if free won’t do its probably better to replace, though they are having production problems right now in Taiwan which is jacking up the cost of drives…at least for a while.

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Sure the drive could be ok but then there’s firmware problems that sometimes crop up and controller board problems…which sector reallocation won’t help. I have a 2 TB drive that seems fine…but it just won’t work properly, it was $70 to replace, so if free won’t do its probably better to replace, though they are having production problems right now in Taiwan which is jacking up the cost of drives…at least for a while.

I just checked with the 3 places I usually get hard drives from and a 1TB HDD is @ 90 to 110 dollars. 90 recertified, 110 new. So software is cheaper now.

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