BleepingComputer.com: New Wd Hard Drive Not Recognized

I bought a 60GB Ultra ATA/100 7200 RPM hard drive from someone on Craigslist. He didn't have the receipt any longer and it had been around a year or so since he bought it, so the warranty is out. It had never been opened, so I figured it would be OK. Well I have tried to install it on 2 different computers and it is not recognized by the BIOS. I have used all of the possible jumper settings and still nothing. I have used different cables and power supplies. Still nothing.
I ran the WD diagnostics as suggested in the help section of this forum. The version 7 linked here gives an error message of 0120 which is listed as unknown with WD. Then I ran the version 10 of the Diag and it read "Physical Media error"
Can anyone offer me any suggestions? Its a complete loss so I can try anything. It never had any information on it , so there is no loss of data. Thank you for any suggestions you can give.

This post has been edited by Crizz44: 09 June 2007 - 08:37 PM

A "Physical Media error" on a new drive is probably caused by rough handling in shipping, which has caused a mechanical failure (arm bent or damaged head), or there's "bad media" on the new drive (platter?) which is keeping it from being ready.

Chances are it's dead-I've only seen one bad drive from a manufacturer, and was told that one of the above was likely the cause of failure. This was a few years ago, so forgive me if the terminology is off a bit.

The only thing that I can suggest to do is to install it as a secondary and hope that windows xp will pick it up. If it does, you can try to run check disk on it and hope that'll fix it. You can also try to wipe the drive and reformat it. If this fails, then use it as a paperweight.

If the drive isn't recognized in the BIOS, then I'm afraid that it's a write-off You may want to try it in another PC just to be sure, but otherwise the cost to repair will far, far exceed the cost of several new ones.

Thank you for all of your help. I tried it as a slave and still won't recognize the drive. I believe you are right on the paperweight. I have ordered a new drive from a company so I can be sure I have a warranty this time. Lesson learned
Thanks again !