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ATI 2010 Disk Cleanser Makes HDD Vanish

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Probably we should have used the Windows Disk Director tool to reformat the old secondary drive...but after cloning from the old drive to new and getting a clean reboot, we decided to use Disk Cleanser to erase all the data on the old drive. Initiated the process and once we saw that 90 minutes would be required, we canceled the process. Now Windows will not recognize the old drive.

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I used the DriveCleanser yesterday under Windows 7 and now my HDD is non-functional, even to the point that it doesn't get mounted, the OS doesn't even see it. How do I get the drive back to being usable?

I see that Mark posted his comment a month and a half ago with no response from support. It would be nice if you helped us out of the problem your product caused.

Joe:

Do you have TrueImage? If so, try the Add a New Hard Disk function. It's on the Tools & Utilities menu under Add New Disk.

See page 172 of the User Guide for additional details.

Mark,

Thanks for the reply. I did try the Add New Disk option which says it was successful, then I followed this with the Partition Creation, but nothing really changed. The Partition Creation steps did not correspond to the images shown in the documentation. The dialogues produced were very similar to the Add New Disk function. I tried this a number of times, but still ended up with a non usable disk. I brought up the Computer (My Computer) window, but it did not recognize a new drive. It's interesting that Acronis (Acronis True Imange Home 2010 - purchased version) does recognize the hardware as being present but the OS doesn't.

Joe

Joe:

Do you see anything in Windows Disk Management console? If Disk Management sees the disk then you can use it to format the disk and add a drive letter. After this it should show up in Windows Explorer.

Joe:

Does your PC's BIOS see the disk? (reboot to check).

Which version of Windows are you running? Do you have any other tools available like Acronis Disk Director, any other partitioning software, disk editors, Linux, etc?

Mark,

Let me update my last entry. I turned off the hard drive. Started Disk Management. Turned on the hard drive. Disk management then showed a new entry as:
Disk 6
Removable (J:)
No Media

Leaving Disk Management running I then turned off the hard drive and the J: entry went away.

Turning the hard disk back on and the same entry I described above returns. This does not give me the option for formatting the non-existent drive.

"Removable Disk (J:)" shows up in the Computer Explorer window, but won't allow me to do anything with it.

Doesn't look promising at all.

Joe

Mark,

I just rebooted with that drive powered on. When I started Disk Management it now shows two disks with the same description as I mentioned above, and My Computer does not show a new device.

I am running Windows 7 Home Premium. I do not have another disk formatting software on my PC.

Joe

Joe, is this removable disk a USB disk?

When you view the disk in Disk Management console and right-click on it, are you able to see the choices for formatting and for changing the drive letter as shown here:

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Mark,

I don't get those options, I get:

Change Drive Letter and Paths...
Properties
Eject (grayed out)
Help

The "Volumes" tab under Properties indicates:
Status: No Media
Partition style: Master Boot Record (MBR)
Capacity: 0 MB
Unallocated space: 0 MB
Reserved space: 0 MB

That's it.

Joe

Joe:

OK - it just sounds like there are no partitions on the disk. Also, you didn't say whether this is a USB disk or an internal disk.

IF it's a USB disk and IF you want a single partition on the disk then you can use Windows 7 Diskpart to fix it up. Just follow this article, posted by forum MVP MudCrab. Although the article is written for a USB flash drive it should also work for a USB hard drive, and even though it says Vista, it will work for Windows 7.

Mark,

thank you. It is a hard disk on a USB port. I'll read that article and give it a try.

Joe

Joe:

One final note - the article has you format the flash drive as FAT32. You will want to format your hard disk as NTFS. So just substitute "ntfs" where the article says "fat32".

Thank Mark, I did catch that. The first four times I tried the command it failed almost immediately. The command that seems to be working is: "format fs=ntfs". It has been running for about 8 hours and the last report is that it's only 4% done. Maybe by the weekend it will finish - successfully, that is.

Joe

That sounds as though the USB port is running at USB1.0 speed instead of USB2.0 high speed.

Do you have space to install this drive temporarily into your PC?

As far as the USB is concerned see if the USB icon in the system tray has a balloon pop up as you move the mouse over it saying it isn't running as USB2.0. You could try removing the USB drive - reboot the PC re-attache the USB drive and see if it goes any faster. Eight hours is a very long time for a format and partitioning.

You haven't mentioned the size of this external drive or whether it is USB powered or via a plug pack.

Colin,

There was no USB icon in the system tray, the only icon associated with this drive was the Elevated DOS Window.

What I did: I stopped the format process, shut down the PC and installed a SATA connection for external connections. I then rebooted the PC and turned on the HDD. I then started 'diskpart' in the Elevated DOS window, created a partition and formatted the drive. I don' t know how long it took, but it was all done when I came back a couple hours later. I then used Disk Management, which could now see the drive, and assigned a drive letter to it.

Thank you Mark and Colin, your help has been invaluable; the disk is now functional once again. This tells me to stay clear of the Acronis DriveCleanser software.

Joe

Joe:

I'm glad you got it sorted.