Western Digital Diagnostics

[ritaylor]

I have a new P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard with a velociraptor. I wanted to zero the drive for a clean install and to my suprise the diagnostic cd won't boot ! It just locks the machine. I never had a problem with any other pc. Support at Western Digital said to make the cd my first boot drive (duh). I asked if the diagnostics worked with the ICH10R chipset and they said maybe not.
Anybody have any ideas ?

[Know Nuttin]

is this a used vraptor? why do u need to zero it?

[Metallica]

I'm not sure if its the same thing, but I use DBAN to wipe my drives .. google it :p

[ritaylor]

Know Nuttin,

It's my raptor. It has vista on it I want to zero it just so I know all is gone before I install it on new motherboard. I've done it on other machines with no problems.

Metallica,

Thanks, I'll look DBAN up.

[johan851]

You don't need to zero a drive for a new install - just reformat. Even a quick format will work fine, and won't cause any problems. Quick formats take about 5-10 seconds rather than, say, 24 hours. :)

[madhatter256]

Try disabling the RAID feature in the BIOS and set the SATA ports to native IDE. Then your WD Diag CD should boot up because it looks for the HDD during the process of booting up. If it can't find it, it will just sit there....


I use killdisk, also the WD's full 'drive erase' is also just as good. Both are low level formaters and I've used killdisk to repair drives with some bad sectors and they pass their diagnostics afterwards.

[Know Nuttin]

i use killdisk but if you're keeping the drive, i don't see a reason to wipe it like that

[MattNo5ss]

I started wiping mine before a OS reinstall so I won't have a "Windows.old" folder that I can't delete on my drive...

Whenever I try to delete it, I get a message that says it doesn't exist..."Disk Cleanup" is supposed to get rid of it, but it doesn't.

I could make the folder "Hidden" so I won't see it, but it annoys me knowing that it's really there.

[johan851]

I started wiping mine before a OS reinstall so I won't have a "Windows.old" folder that I can't delete on my drive...

Whenever I try to delete it, I get a message that says it doesn't exist..."Disk Cleanup" is supposed to get rid of it, but it doesn't.

I could make the folder "Hidden" so I won't see it, but it annoys me knowing that it's really there.
That means you didn't format at all. You should format between installs. You just don't need to do a low-level format, which takes much, much longer.

[GBH]

That means you didn't format at all. You should format between installs. You just don't need to do a low-level format, which takes much, much longer.

How do you do that?

[johan851]

A low level format? Usually with your hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic tools, although the other tools mentioned in this thread can do it as well.

[ritaylor]

madhatter256-I tried setting the sata drive to ide mode but WD diag still would not boot the machine. Maybe it won't work on X58. However, I got killdisk and it worked great ! Thanks for your help.