[RKinner]

Since it is a Seagate drive you could download their disk test program and see what they think about your drive.

http://www.seagate.c...000dd04090aRCRD

You want the Seatools for DOS option which can be burned to a CD that you boot from. Use the Long test which will take hours to run.

The "LONG Test" test will take a long time to complete. Because the "LONG Test" reads every sector on
the drive, the amount of time required will depend on the speed and capacity of the disk drive. The
highest capacity drives often take 2 to 3 hours to complete. At any time, feel free to Cancel the test
without harming the drive. The "LONG Test" will collect information about possible defects. If any defect
are found, a list will be offered at the end or after aborting the scan. You will have the opportunity to
attempt to repair the problem sectors.

As it says, when it finishes it will ask you if you want to repair. Say Yes! Repair is very quick if it works.

You can also try to restore the mbr without backing it up.

MBRWiz  /Repair=1  /Disk=0

or

try one of the other mbr tools on Hiren's to see if you can get them to back it up first.

MBRTool:

MBRtool  /BCK  /DSK:0  /FIL:my_mbr

This saves it to the same drive. See if you can get that to work.

To fix the mbr with mbrtool the command is:

MBRtool  /RBC  /DSK:0

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Similar to DSRFix, I downloaded SeaTool for DOS from the link you gave, and pasted the extracted files into a USB drive. I used USBFormat and Grub4DOS from Hiren's Boot USB method to set up a bootable USB drive. And it worked for Hiren's. But the computer doesn't boot with it. After I pressed F12 at the Dell Start-up Page and selected USB Drive as boot option, there are messages as follows


It seems that a "grldr" file is missing in the SeaTool ISO file. I cross checked the Hiren's ISO file and found out that "grldr" file is present. It appears that "grldr" file has some sort of importance for booting a USB drive.

I did some research on booting SeaTool from USB drive at the SeaGate Community Forum, and found another person who has the same goal. His post in the forum is how to make bootable flash drive for seatools for DOS
Another person found his way into booting SeaTool using a USB drive, but he seemed to have trouble shutting down his computer. His post is Seatools DOS Shutdown USB Flash Drive Boot

I also found a method to create a bootable external hard drive from SeaGate. The link is create the bootable drive using FreeDOS
I wonder if this method would help in creating a bootable USB drive for SeaTool for DOS. Please advice.

By the way, I couldn't find MBRTool in the program list in Hiren's so tried to use MBRTool using command prompt and MBRWiz.cmd in Hiren's. Apparently, MBRTool is missing in the Hiren's I downloaded.

Edited by ahboy123, 09 January 2012 - 09:57 AM.

[ahboy123]

Similar to DSRFix, I downloaded SeaTool for DOS from the link you gave, and pasted the extracted files into a USB drive. I used USBFormat and Grub4DOS from Hiren's Boot USB method to set up a bootable USB drive. And it worked for Hiren's. But the computer doesn't boot with it. After I pressed F12 at the Dell Start-up Page and selected USB Drive as boot option, there are messages as follows


It seems that a "grldr" file is missing in the SeaTool ISO file. I cross checked the Hiren's ISO file and found out that "grldr" file is present. It appears that "grldr" file has some sort of importance for booting a USB drive.

I did some research on booting SeaTool from USB drive at the SeaGate Community Forum, and found another person who has the same goal. His post in the forum is how to make bootable flash drive for seatools for DOS
Another person found his way into booting SeaTool using a USB drive, but he seemed to have trouble shutting down his computer. His post is Seatools DOS Shutdown USB Flash Drive Boot

I also found a method to create a bootable external hard drive from SeaGate. The link is create the bootable drive using FreeDOS
I wonder if this method would help in creating a bootable USB drive for SeaTool for DOS. Please advice.

By the way, I couldn't find MBRTool in the program list in Hiren's so tried to use MBRTool using command prompt and MBRWiz.cmd in Hiren's. Apparently, MBRTool is missing in the Hiren's I downloaded.

Edited by ahboy123, 09 January 2012 - 09:57 AM.

[RKinner]

I expect you are copying the .iso file instead of burning a bootable disk. (When you look at the disk after you burn it you should not see .iso any more. Also make sure that you have unzipped it first if it ends in .zip) Try using Free Iso Burner: http://www.freeisoburner.com/

It only does it one way so it should be correct. Point it at the .iso file and let it burn.

Ron

[ahboy123]

I extracted the files from the .iso file using a compression file extractor called Hamster Soft Free ZIP Archiver. There were altogether 23 items:
- folders: [BOOT], BCDW, FreeDOS
- files: Autorun, drivedetect, RMA, Seatools.ima, seglogo, and a number of PDF files.

These items were copied to the USB drive after I formatted the USB drive using USB_format to FAT and grub4dos.

I wonder if you meant burn this .iso file to the USB drive using Free ISO burner?

[RKinner]

Normally you burn the CD first then follow the instructions at http://www.hiren.inf...tcd-on-usb-disk to make it boot from a USB. No idea if your way will work.

[ahboy123]

I followed the method that worked for Hiren's, but it didn't work for SeaTools.

The computer boots up but stopped at a black screen, just like before.

It looks like a "grldr" file is missing in the SeaTool ISO file. I cross checked the Hiren's ISO file and found out that "grldr" file is present. I wonder if "grldr" file has some sort of importance for booting a USB drive?

[RKinner]

"grldr" is a linux thing so are trying to use grub

http://www.gnu.org/s...anual/grub.html

If seagate doesn't use grub but hyren's does then you may not be able to make it boot from a USB without some tweaking.

[ahboy123]

This method was used when installing Hiren's: My link
Step 2 is related to Grub. This step was also used for installing SeaTools but it didn't work. Could it be that there is something we can tweak here?

[RKinner]

3. Copy grldr and menu.lst (from HBCD folder of the CD) to the usb drive’s root folder.

You will need to get grldr and menu.lst from Hiren's and then
you will need to look at menu.lst and see if you can change it to make it apply to seagate. I expect you can look at menu.lst with notepad.