Broken HDD or boot sector virus?

[fixedwing]

Have a recently installed Maxtor 8.4 GB IDE drive that has some problems. When the system is turned on it sounds as if it is continuously retrying to find home position for the read arm assembly. In one system the BIOS reports the drive as an unknown type. In another system, the BIOS reports the drive to be a different model with smaller geometry. The Maxtor diagnostics reports "Identify Drive Command Failure" and also indicates incorrect geometry. Needless to say, cannot boot or read from the drive.

Is this problem definately related to a drive hardware failure or is it possible that boot sector information was destroyed by a virus that renders this drive unusable (I don't know if geometry and identification parameters are stored in boot sector).

Given the above description, any ideas on at least partial data recovery?

Thanks for your replys in advance.

[Paleo Pete]

Virus is certainly possible, so is hardware failure. If it's a recently purchased drive, Maxtor has a 2 year warranty, or mine did, I'd take it back and say "gimme a new one." If BIOS and the drive diagnostics can't see the drive, I'd say it's dead.

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