Can a virus ruin a hard drive?

Well my nephew ask me to fix his computer as it wouldn't bootup and he said it might be a virus.

Well the only thing readable on an 80 gig HD was a 12gig partition.........well to cut a long story short I tried everything from fdisk and format to hiren's cd, via winxp install, even Maxtors low level format.

The annoying thing it is recognised as 80 gig at bootup and you can do a surface scan for bad sectors, but the drive is unusable, so unless someone knows of a program that can fix the drive (that's not on hirens) it must be the electronics that have packed up.

Yeah I know another say 160gig HD is only £32 so why bother................but its my hobby playing with computers.

I dont think its a virus per se - most likely just dead kit :(

it is *technically* possible for a virus to damage hardware, but viruses have been more focused on profit than damage for years & years

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Originally Posted by directhex

it is *technically* possible for a virus to damage hardware, but viruses have been more focused on profit than damage for years & years

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All he had was a few trojans on the 12gig partition that was working, unfortunately mfg date dec 2001, war.end Mar05................. but it's running smoothly i.e. no odd noises........ Oh well I will phone him to buy another HD.

BTW it's an Intel D845hv motherboard on an appx 2001 computer and has ata 100 support, and I've been checking on google and one guy has fitted a 160gig HD to his similar system and Intel say 137gig and higher.
So to play safe have told my nephew to buy a 160gig HD.

But as a general question:- Is there a limit to the max size IDE Hard drive that a computer of the 2001 era can handle.

A 80 gig hard drive didn't show up on my old P233 spare computer..........erm well not on auto, couldn't be bothered to type in cylinders etc

Depends on the BIOS and OS. I vaguely remember something like LBA or something being an option that needed to be supported. File system type (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) is also important.

As an aside, while I've never seen a virus kill a drive, I have seen fragmentation kill one :(

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Depends on the BIOS and OS. I vaguely remember something like LBA or something being an option that needed to be supported.

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this is correct. 48-bit lba is what's needed for >128GiB (137GB). it's supported in XPSP1+, 2KSP3+, 2K3, Linux 2.4.19+, and others

if a virus causes a pc to thrash a hard drive too much it can cause cheaper consumer drives to fail. scsi's ftw

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Originally Posted by alsenior

if a virus causes a pc to thrash a hard drive too much it can cause cheaper consumer drives to fail. scsi's ftw

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or it could just reflash the drive firmware with garbage

but there's no good reason to do it. virus writers these days are interested in selling botnets, not breaking hardware

Have you tried F disking the drive?

"well to cut a long story short I tried everything from fdisk and format to hiren's cd, via winxp install, even Maxtors low level format."

yer I think he has ;)

lol sorry in the middle of copying things from my hard drive preparing for a reinstall, not paying attention much

A lot of people will automatically blame a virus when things go wrong, but it's just as likely to be a hardware or other software problem. In this case it's a failing hard drive.

As you said it is 'your hobby playing with computers', now may be a good opportunity for you to experiment with various data recovery programs. Even if there's nothing on the drive which needs to be rescued, it's a skill which will be sure to come in handy one day.

might just be unlucky timing and the drive has had it

What does fdisk show after removing all the partitions?

When creating a new one, what is the maximum size listed?

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Originally Posted by Fabula

What does fdisk show after removing all the partitions?

When creating a new one, what is the maximum size listed?

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Does all the normal things like create primary, make active, and the max use of the disk, but only shows about 8gigs now, so 72 gigs are missing ..............but this is mis-information because that 8gigs is not recognised by winxp, or a partition manager...... to instal on it (message is "unknown").

Using winxp bootup CD and floppy drive to format and they both abort, checked the drive for bad sectors there were a few but they were then marked so winxp etc would just not instal on them.

Before I started the hard disk recovery winxp flashed up on bootup for a second then crashed and there was a 2nd partition. erm what's the problem? easy to solve just format c:, check for virus on d: and re-install, but.............................................

BTW tried another hard disk and the computer works perfectly, also put the dodgy hard disk in a newer computer it is recognised as 80 gigs but still unusable after further attempts to get it working.
I'm sure Maxtor engineers can get it working but I certainly can't and have given up..

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Originally Posted by directhex

or it could just reflash the drive firmware with garbage

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Ah! so in theory you could re flash the hard drive with Maxtors code.

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Originally Posted by max99

A lot of people will automatically blame a virus when things go wrong, but it's just as likely to be a hardware or other software problem. In this case it's a failing hard drive.

As you said it is 'your hobby playing with computers', now may be a good opportunity for you to experiment with various data recovery programs. Even if there's nothing on the drive which needs to be rescued, it's a skill which will be sure to come in handy one day.

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erm Well when I started yes, but I've cocked up the hard disk completly by doing nothing wrong or to re-phrase that..............I haven't done anything that didn't work on another hard disk.

If you want your data, then you need to consider repairing the partition. However, if the data is of no value, avoid using the same hard disk drive again, it is not worth the headache. Buy a Hitachi-IBm, perhaps sata rather than ide drives

Try getting the hard-drive scanning + repair software

here

this will tell you if its goosed or not and if its not it should be able to fix it for you

EDIT: try using a boot up disk and doing it in dos rather than in windows just to be sure. If there is a write drive with zeros option i would maybe go for that rather than standard format

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

Try getting the hard-drive scanning + repair software

here

this will tell you if its goosed or not and if its not it should be able to fix it for you

EDIT: try using a boot up disk and doing it in dos rather than in windows just to be sure. If there is a write drive with zeros option i would maybe go for that rather than standard format

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Thanks......changed over to the faulty drive, but the Maxtor file didn't work on making the floppy bootable erm well until I can rectify this, thought I would try fdisk again from a floppy:-

1..Deleted primary etc....ok
2...create primary dos partition...ok
3..verifying drive integrity...ok
4..create max and active...ok
5..verify drive integrity..ok
6..reboot..ok
7..format c:
8..formatting 12,62.95M.....HUH it's an 80 gig drive
9..reaches 3%...message trying to recover allocation unit 84,872....huh oh well it does it.
10..reaches 6%..message> not ready, format terminated
11..a:\

This drive is on magic mushrooms.

yeah its nackered. Take it back and get a replacment if you can

Maxtor hard drives are considered some of the worst, so I would get a different make if you have to purchase a new one.

As you have already done a low level format, then I assume there is no important data on the drive. A great utility I use all the time for completely wiping a hard drive is called DBAN

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Download the ISO (or setup app) and burn it to a CD. Boot using this CD and do a single-pass wipe of the entire drive. If this does not complete, you have a problem with the drive. If it does complete, then use the XP installation CD to partition the drive and install XP.

The best thing about IBM (Hitachi) is their warranty service. I have even had a raid pair fail within 1 day. I will never buy again. Maxtor I have had no problem with, but I am told they have dropped their quality since the takeover.

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Originally Posted by Defenestration

Maxtor hard drives are considered some of the worst, so I would get a different make if you have to purchase a new one.

As you have already done a low level format, then I assume there is no important data on the drive. A great utility I use all the time for completely wiping a hard drive is called DBAN

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Download the ISO (or setup app) and burn it to a CD. Boot using this CD and do a single-pass wipe of the entire drive. If this does not complete, you have a problem with the drive. If it does complete, then use the XP installation CD to partition the drive and install XP.

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The maxtor software does the same/similar thing and has failed so i very much doubt any 3rd party boot up software is worth the effort. If the Maxtor official software fails to sort the problem i would say you're in a good position to give up and claim under warranty (is still possible) as the issue is clearly something screwed up within the actual device itself rather than within any sofware or operating system. If your out of warrenty, fair enough keep trying bu to be honest i would just get myself on scan and order a western digital or seagate drive

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Originally Posted by Defenestration

Maxtor hard drives are considered some of the worst, so I would get a different make if you have to purchase a new one.

As you have already done a low level format, then I assume there is no important data on the drive. A great utility I use all the time for completely wiping a hard drive is called DBAN

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Download the ISO (or setup app) and burn it to a CD. Boot using this CD and do a single-pass wipe of the entire drive. If this does not complete, you have a problem with the drive. If it does complete, then use the XP installation CD to partition the drive and install XP.

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Handy link thanks, but there was nothing important on the 2nd partition on the HD.
Looks like another thumbs down for Maxtor as IMO if the drive is running "sweet" you shouldn't have problems.

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

If the Maxtor official software fails to sort the problem i would say you're in a good position to give up and claim under warranty (is still possible) as the issue is clearly something screwed up within the actual device itself rather than within any sofware or operating system.

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Very true.

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

order a western digital or seagate drive

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... or Samsung SpinPoint.

yeah my dad has a couple of samsungs and they are very reliable.

I have a maxtor 250gb one and its b*llocks tbf. Loud, Hot and slow