DBAN possibly killed hard disk

Ziggy · 12 Apr 2009 at 10:14

Not sure which forum to put this in...

I zeroed the hard disk of an old laptop using DBAN. When it finished it told me that it completed with "non-fatal errors." Now when I try to install XP it tells me that it can't find any hard disks. I booted the DBAN disk again, and it can still see the hard disk and write to it. Any ideas why XP can't?

Note: I've never installed an OS on this machine myself so it could possibly be XP.

deadite66 · 12 Apr 2009 at 10:50

if you have access to a burner try partedmagic OSS livecd 71MB iso, try creating a partition with it then see if xp can access it.

FaceplantSi · 12 Apr 2009 at 12:17

Could be that your BIOS is set for the SATA to run in AHCI mode which XP can't use by default. If so you'll either need to change BIOS so SATA is IDE mode or supply Chipset drivers on usb/floppy by pressing F6 when XP setup asks for them.

Ziggy · 12 Apr 2009 at 12:44

Yes, you're right - it was set to AHCI mode.

D'oh!

Phil2008 · 12 Apr 2009 at 13:21

you need to partition the hdd before anything will show up

Phil2008 · 12 Apr 2009 at 13:23

Ziggy said:
Yes, you're right - it was set to AHCI mode.

D'oh!

Oh see that youve sorted it now.

Ziggy · 12 Apr 2009 at 13:28

Done a full format and no errors. \o/