ok i bout=ght one of these refurbished on ebay, when i plug it in as slave the bios recognizes it fine, windows recognizes it fine but it is not accesible because it is not formated, so when i try to format it, the drive powers itself off (can hear it spin down) and freezes the pc, i have tried this in 2 different computers same thing, and also tried putting it in a pc by itself and booting my windows cd to let it format it but same thing happens (shuts down). i also downloaded from western digitals website a wd diagnostics tool, which tells me it failed the s.m.a.r.t. status, but whenever i trie to run the actual diagnotic test same thing occurs, the drive powers down and freezes the computer. now the strange thing, i can format it as fat32 and it works just fine...what the hell is up with that?
what exactly is a "low level" format? edit: ok did some checking and gonna try the low level format tool from here http://www.downloadjunction.com/product/software/39962/index.html, crossing my fingers.