Format interrupted, now hard drive not visible

Hello,

I have a 500GB seagate SATA drive. I had it connected to a Win 7 machine via a USB adapter. I had erased all partitions and was formatting the drive (via computer manager, disk manager).

Unfortunately I bumped the drive and it fell a short fall and disconnected from the USB adapter. When I plugged it back in, Windows couldn't see it.

I then plugged it directly onto the motherboard via SATA cable and booted to gparted via LIVECD. Couldn't see the drive either.

My plan:
1. Enter BIOS and see if drive is seen there
2. Boot using UBCD4DOS and use disk tool there if it is recognized.

Is the drive hosed in the collective opinion? is there anyway to 'reset' the drive?

Thanks in advance

I would do a secure erase with Parted Magic. Parted Magic can be run from a cd or usb and does not need to be installed on your computer to run.

Then you should be able to format the hdd in Windows 7, unless it suffered mechanical damage from the fall while in operation.

I guess I'm going to need to start at the BIOS level - if it isn't recognized in BIOS - no matter what LIVE CD option I use, it won't be seen and I can only assume mechanical failure. It was just such a short drop and wasn't on it's side or anything, just hit flat and the USB adapter popped off.

And to answer your question Omega - no, not showing up in windows at all. And for anyone else reading this, omega is correct, many times a drive can be attached and frustratingly not show up in windows explorer - this is typically because it either is not partitioned or formatted correctly OR there is a drive letter conflict. The easiest way to determine if drive is even attached is to go to control panel --> administrative tools --> computer manager (also accessible by right clicking my computer or computer depending on OS and clicking "manage" ) --> disk management.

Alas i did this and my drive was not showing up at all there - hence deciding to attach directly to MOBO vs using USB adapter and booting into a live CD environment with gparted. Gparted only saw my 1 drive with the OS, and not the 2nd drive I was trying to format.

I'll troubleshoot tomorrow and post an update.

I had a friend bring me an external drive to check out, they had the drive right side up (tower) on the carpet and it fell over. As pathetic as a drop that was being on a carpeted floor and just being tipped, it was gone for good.

Sorry, i wasn't trying to assume you didn't know, it's just one of those first steps i go through when troubleshooting since i worked at a help desk before.

Also sorry to hear that as HDD drives are 1.5 X -> 2 X what hey were a year ago.

One Of the advanges of SSDs (Excludding great performance boost) is that less subject to damage from shock, But then a 500 gig SSD, You need to forsake wine, women, and all else that is great in life (unless rich ofcoarse) to pay for it!!!! (LOL)

As the old saying goes live and learn and what out for Murphy.