error when formatting - invalid media reading drive C

was playing with a sector editor, figured i can't do permanent damage.
was experimenting. none of the datda on the hdd is important. I
thought that fdisk and with its mbr switch, and format, would be able
to rewrite the bytes that count.

i wrote a boot record from a floppy disk onto the hdd. - i.e. replaced
the first 512 bytes. then i lost access to all my files on that hdd -
fair enough. so I used fdisk removed the partition, recreatred it made
it active, rebooted, tried to format it (A:\>format c: /s) and I got
an error "invalid media reading drive c abort rety fail" So I aborted.
I did fdisk /mbr. Then I tried format c: /s again, got the same error,
did 'f' for fail and it let me format it. I shoudln't get that error
before formatting though.

it's an excelstor hdd (i.e. a rubbish hdd), they don't have any
utilities on their site for download. but i'm hoping that free 3rd
party software has a solution. there was a mention of norton disk
doctor fixing it on usenet, but no further information was give

<q_q_anonymous.DeleteThis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1115227160.279265.138620@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

 > was playing with a sector editor, figured i can't do permanent damage.

Correct.

 > was experimenting. none of the datda on the hdd is important.
 > I thought that fdisk and with its mbr switch, and format, would
 > be able to rewrite the bytes that count.

Its simpler to just write zeros thru the first few hundred tracks if
you do manage to produce a problem with something like clearhdd.

 > i wrote a boot record from a floppy disk onto the hdd. - i.e.
 > replaced the first 512 bytes. then i lost access to all my files
 > on that hdd - fair enough. so I used fdisk removed the partition,

That isnt going to affect the boot code in the MBR.

 > recreatred it made it active, rebooted, tried to format it (A:\>format c: /s)
 > and I got an error "invalid media reading drive c abort rety fail"

Presumably it got rather confused about the geometry
detail etc in the MBR that came from a floppy.

 > So I aborted. I did fdisk /mbr. Then I tried format c: /s again,
 > got the same error, did 'f' for fail and it let me format it. I
 > shoudln't get that error before formatting though.

You likely still have the useless geometry detail in the MBR.

 > it's an excelstor hdd (i.e. a rubbish hdd), they don't have any
 > utilities on their site for download. but i'm hoping that free 3rd
 > party software has a solution. there was a mention of norton disk
 > doctor fixing it on usenet, but no further information was give

Wipe it with clearhdd, that will fix it.
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/clearhdd.htm" target="_blank">http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/clearhdd.htm</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->