Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

I have several HDs that were rendered inoperable when I attempted to use them as Time Machine backup devices on my iMac. (known problem with ejecting USB drives on Macs) I do not think the drives are hardware damaged.

I have since tried to reformat them on my Windows 7 system, but they do not mount. When I looked at disk management, it shows the drive, but says it needs to be initialized. When I attempt to initialize, I get a error that says "Incorrect Function"

I have tried everything I can think of to salvage these drives.. and am wondering, before I purchase, if R-Studio can fix this sort of problem? I do not care about the data content.. can be deleted/overwritten/formatted. I just want to get my drives back!

I think, you can do the following trick even without buying R-Studio.
1. Install R-Studio in its demo mode.
2. In R-Studio, look at the disk you want to revive and check that R-Studio reports its correct size (means no hardware problems).
3. Enable write on the Main tab of the R-Studio settings (Menu Tools -> Settings).
4. DOUBLE, TRIPLE, QUADRUPLE CHECK THAT YOU'RE GOING TO WORK WITH THE RIGHT DISK!!!!!
5. Right-click the disk and select View/Edit on the shortcut menu.
6. In the Hex/text Editor window, Enable write on the Tools menu.
7. Find the 55aa (in hex) binary pattern at the end of the 0 sector, change it to something else and save the changes.
8. Close the Editor, R-Studio, and restart the computer.
Now Windows should be able to initialize the disk.
ONCE AGAIN!!! BE ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT YOU DO ALL THIS WITH THE CORRECT DISK, AND NOT WITH THE SYSTEM ONE, OR YOU DAMAGE THE WINDOWS OS!!!