John,

You will need WD's file called wdat_ide.exe - the Defect Manager s/w for
older drives, including the AC2200.

This file can be found at http://www.wdc.com/support/ftp/drives.html

Hope this helps your problem.

Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: John Chin <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, March 16, 1998 05:20 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Low Level Format a WDC hard drive


>Gentle Readers:
>
>I am trying to load a 486DX4-100 system with
>Windows 95b. The installation gets to the
>FINISH screen which advises Windows will
>now restart and run for the first time. Of course,
>it doesn't. It loads Win95, gives the Windows
>starting screen then gives the "Now safe to
>turn off your computer."
>
>I have swapped out the RAM, and every other
>component is a known working part.
>
>I suspect the hard drive, which is a Western
>Digital 203 MB drive (Caviar AC2200). I have
>run the Western Digital drive diagnostics and
>did the zero-out the drive routine (the Pseudo-LLF).
>No errors are reported.
>
>I want to Low Level Format this WDC IDE drive.
>Does anyone know of a shareware/freeware
>utility for this? Or could you recommend a cheap
>commercial product. . . ?
>
>Obviously, with the low prices of drives, I don't
>want to spend much money to return this drive
>to an usable state.
>
>Thanks, in advance.
>
>John Chin