Format fails on refurbished Seagate Barracuda IDE 120GB on Dimension 2400

First question is what brand and model is the original Master drive?  That could have something to do with things as some drives (specifically Western Digital) have a different jumper method.  Without knowing what the other drive is it's difficult to offer advice as that could affect what is happening here.

Your best bet at this point would be to download the stand alone Seagate Diagnostic Software and run the exhaustive test to see what it tells you.  If you can't run it with both drives connected, then disconnect the original drive, boot from the stand alone SeaTools Disk, and test the new drive by itself.  Until you know that it is okay you are just wasting your time.

Also, NEVER use the quick format option to format a drive.  It doesn't do as exhaustive a format and may leave some defects un-marked on the drive map that the standard format would detect.  I don't know about you but my data is worth more than the time saved doing the quick format. 

Post back when you have the info on the original Master Drive and the SeaTools results and we'll see what we can figure out.

Hello hotpprs, I have run into this in the past. You may have a defective drive, but before I concluded that, I would disconnect the original drive and have only the drive you are having issues with connected. Connect it to the end connector and jumper it to CS. Reboot the system and enter the BIOS and let it discover the drive. Insert the OS disk, reboot, and try to install the OS on it. Use the quick format method. If that is not succesful, then try the full format method. There are, as others have mentioned, situations where the full format is needed. I could explain this but it is quite technical and not useful in the normal scheme of things. If you are successful with the install, then shut the system down and reconnect the original drive to the end connector and the second drive to the middle connector with both jumpered as CS. Make sure the boot order is to the original drive. If all goes well you should be able to boot into Windows from the original drive and then reformat the drive that had issues from within the Control Panel, Administrative Tools. Sometimes the MBR gets corrupted and cannot be repaired except by Windows during an install. Hope this helps.

ParaSmurf68.

The original 80GB drive happens to be Seagate also. The jumper legend is the same on both drives, and I had everything jumpered correctly whether I was using master/slave or cable select. I can't run SeaTools as it hangs without giving me any drive information. I also ran the Dell bios IDE drive diaganostic. It shows me the drive description, and then does not proceed any further.

Hanspuppa.

I followed your action plan. I first deleted the new drive partition, to make sure I was starting as fresh as possible. I disconnected my original drive, set the new one as cable select and intalled it on the black end (master) connector, and ran the Dell recovery software. It created the partition, started the format, but obviously something was wrong. It was running really slow, but the progress bar was incrementing. It ran for about 15 hours, and got up to about 75% completetion, and stated that it could not format the drive.

I'll call Seagate tomorrow. I did see one other tip on this forum about another manufacturer giving someone a utility to lower the UDMA setting for a similar problem. Unless the drive is outright defective, it could be something like that. But I think an outright defective drive would not be creating the partition, and showing healthy in Disk Manager. I would also think the diags would fail with an error code. I'll try to post an update on the outcome.

PapaSmurf68.

I was giving up on the Seatools because it just hung when I first tried it concurrent, (while I was booted with my original hard drive). I didn't realize that they had the DOS version which I could boot off a diskette and just isolate the new drive. I tried that today, and it fails the short and long tests. I saved the error logs in case Seagate needs it. Looks like this was a DOA from day 1. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea going for a refurb, but the price was unreal. ($25.19 + $9 for shipping from Computer Geeks). But it won't be such a good deal if they don't honor the warranty. We'll see. Not sure if I go to Computer Geeks or Seagate for a replacement?

Several things here.  Lowering the UDMA setting won't fix the problem, it will only deal with the symptom.  Your system is an ATA-100 system so lowering the UDMA setting to ATA-66 or ATA-33 isn't a viable option as the system and the drive are designed to run at ATA-100.  If the drive needs to be run at lower than that then either it, the cable, or the motherboards IDE controller are defective. 

Next, trying to check a drive by formatting it and installing windows won't tell you anything useful.  Even defective drives will allow you to format them and install windows.  They will even run windows, will pass chkdsk, show up healthy in Disk Manager, and even pass Dell's Onboard Disk Diagnostic.  The only way to know if it is defective is to run and pass the MANUFACTURER'S Disk Diagnostic Utility, in this case SeaTools.  Your next to last sentence states that  "I would also think the diags would fail with an error code."  Does that mean that it passed or that it won't complete SeaTools or something else?

The only refurbished hard drives I would ever purchase would be a re-certified drive direct from the manufacturer.  My data is worth more than the few dollars saved.  I've seen brand new 80gig IDE drives going for $35-40 including shipping so that isn't that good of a deal anyway. 

I'm glad that you got it figured out though.  I hope you can get your money back (or a factory re-certified drive).  Using the manufacturer's Disk Diagnostic Utility from a self booting disk is the ONLY way to reliably and effectively test a drive as it's the only way to eliminate Operating System and Driver problems from the mix and get down to just the hardware level.  I've been doing this way to long (since the mid 70's) and learned the hard way.

PapaSmurf68.

The description of the drive says "factory recertified". Does that mean Seagate recertified it, or Computer Geeks recertified it in their "factory"? It should be interesting when I ask Computer Geeks that question tomorrow. I wonder if they will issue me a refund, or if I can get a replacement from Seagate. I know Computer Geeks is "out of stock" on the one I ordered. Thanks for all your help.