JAY EMRIE wrote in a message to JIM HOLSONBACK:

JH>I was recently trying to use the WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics diskette
JH>to try and wake up a HDD which FDISK could not detect.

JH>Here's the strange part - - per its label, the Drive is a WD Caviar 5.1
JH>GB,  Model AC35100,  CHS of 10672/15/63 (LBA Translation 667/240/63?).
JH>But my mainboard autodetects it as 11184/15/63, and recommends an LBA
JH>translation of 699/240/63. When I run the WD diagnostics, it detects the
JH>HDD as 5.4 GB, WD Model AC35400L.  The WD utility "write
zeroes" seems
JH>to work on it, but takes a loooong time - a couple hours to get thru the
JH>first couple percent of the drive.  FDISK still wouldn't work after
JH>that.

JH>My only SWAG so far is that the Make, model, chs etc. of the drive are
JH>stored on a PROM or EPROM chip on the circuit board, and that someone
JH>swapped circuit boards on this drive, in hopes of making a Frankenstein
JH>and bringing it to life.

JH>Any other guesses/insights/advice will be appreciated.

JE> Jim, considering the low prices of HDs now days, it hardly seems
JE> worthwhile to expend too much time and energy on only a 5.1 Gb HD -
JE> dubious at best. I'd just look around for a good price on a new HD.

OTOH,  of the _four_ machines currently running here I have only _two_
drives in the whole mess,  out of 7 or 8 in those boxes,  that exceed that
in size.  And of the fair pile of HDs I have on hand here,  only _two_ of
them exceed that in size.  Got one 10G drive I'm fixing to put in to the
main linux box, after having tested it,  and one slightly larger that I
need to try with a SCSI card and see how it works.

Any of you guys having "older" drives that are >5G in size you
don't want,  by all means feel free to send 'em to me!  :-)

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