Can't format a failing drive

[FL630]

I've got a drive which I'm RMAing with OCUK. It's full of stuff, 20,000+ photos, videos, games, all sorts, some of which I do not really want people to see (clean your minds!!).

OCUK are happy to take it back formatted, however I cannot do so. The drive occasionally reads, so someone could easily access the content, but for whatever reason, either through the standard right click method, or by disk management, I cannot format it.

Any other methods or programs to try it which may have more luck?

 

[FL630]

some drive manufacturers used to offer utility type tools for their hard drives which work at a very low level which might get you access to formatting it or wiping the partition data.

Thanks Donnie, I didn't know this so downloaded WD's software. Believe it or not that fails at formatting it too, but all the data seems to have gone. I tried doing a "quick test" of the drive too, which also fails.

Basically it's utterly ******, but at least now I know, aside of taking the platters out of the HDD, nobody is getting in!