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Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 12:15 pm Post subject: Unable to Format...

Magneon has just helped me install an 80G Western Digital HD I had lying around in an external casing so I can use it on my laptop. I noticed when I was trying to move files onto it that it would freeze up my computer for at least 12 hours (I then manually turned it off) if I tried to move more than 20MB from my D: drive to the new drive.

Hoping to take care of it by starting afresh, I went to format the new drive. The format gets up to the end of the slider and then says "Windows was unable to complete the format."

All the results I get on Google say that I should try formatting it in FAT32, but also says I can't do that on drives bigger than 32G (this being 80G, that isn't an option.) I have been trying to format it in NTFS. Now, of course, the drive is unformatted and can't be used at all.

Apparently I've just piled one problem on top of another. Any advice? Thanks in advance!

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 12:22 pm Post subject:

http://www.killdisk.com/

If that won't fix it I don't know what will... it'll run a lowlevel and overwrite the whole drive with 1s, then you should be able to format it normally. It's free to use killdisk, just download, burn to CD and boot from that CD.

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:23 pm Post subject:

Okay, I don't really want to destroy ALL my hard drives, just the F: drive. Will booting from the disk do that?

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:21 pm Post subject:

I've seen something with an external case.
there was mention that the drive needed to be already formated before inserting into the case.

win2k won't fat32 format bigger than 40gb (pretty sure)
fat32 limitation

win98se will do it. it don't care about limitations.

Leg Humper Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Posts: 5483

Fat32Format
but there must be a problem if it can't be formatted as NTFS.

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 5:29 am Post subject:

Okay, I tried KillDisk, and got the following log:

"Bad (unwritable) sectors detected from 63 to 156301487 on Hard Disk 1."

That was on a "one pass zeros, (quick, low security)" attempt.

Is this drive basically screwed?

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:58 am Post subject:

affabletoaster wrote:
Okay, I tried KillDisk, and got the following log:

"Bad (unwritable) sectors detected from 63 to 156301487 on Hard Disk 1."

That was on a "one pass zeros, (quick, low security)" attempt.

Is this drive basically screwed?

Wow, sure sounds that way. There might still be something you could do to salvage it, but I dunno what it would be.

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:25 am Post subject:

I sure wouldn't trust that drive to anything except maybe as a scratch drive.

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 12:14 pm Post subject:

I've seen this problem with hard drives a few dozen times... one sector goes bad after all of the "spare" sectors have been used and then when the drive gets to the new bad sector, it pukes and locks up cause the newer drives don't know what to do about a bad sector when error correction and all the "smarts" put in them doesn't work. Usually I've seen that on drives that lock up when the page file hits that sector. Reboot and it works again until it hits that sector again. Basically it's a lack of fault tolerance on the part of the manufacturer and the drive is now a coaster (especially if you're bored like me and disassemble them and take out the platters)

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 12:39 pm Post subject:

Damn...it was bought probably 3 years ago, but barely used in that time. I did get a virus in 2006 (EdisonRex will remember trying to work it through with me) and we opted just to format the drive because it was such a mess. I guess the little guy's gone.

Thanks for the advice, all!

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:34 pm Post subject:

affabletoaster wrote:
Damn...it was bought probably 3 years ago, but barely used in that time. I did get a virus in 2006 (EdisonRex will remember trying to work it through with me) and we opted just to format the drive because it was such a mess. I guess the little guy's gone.

Thanks for the advice, all!

aww. I do remember.

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:08 pm Post subject:

EdisonRex wrote:
affabletoaster wrote:
Damn...it was bought probably 3 years ago, but barely used in that time. I did get a virus in 2006 (EdisonRex will remember trying to work it through with me) and we opted just to format the drive because it was such a mess. I guess the little guy's gone.

Thanks for the advice, all!

aww. I do remember.

I can never thank you enough for the time (and long-distance phone money!) you put into that project. I'm so sorry I wasn't able to pull through in the end.

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:34 am Post subject:

This is somethimng I've run into many times. You can try using a Partition Manager like, Partition Magic, to create a partition up to the area of the bad sector. By leaving out the affected sector(s) your drive should operate normally. This may or may not work, it depends on how bad the damaaged areas are.
Now you could go one step further and use the same manager to create a hidden unformatted partition in the bad sector(s). Then use something like Spinrite to fix those bad areas. Once Spinrite is done you should be able to unhide the parttition, format it as a seperate partition, and use it as a temporary storage. I would not trust that spot to store important stuff, but for temp it should be ok.

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 2:57 am Post subject:

you know, some1 mentioned that the drive needs to be fdisked and formatted BEFORE it's in the external case ....

some dood named, uhm, Dave Rave
geez, you know, that's my name . strange that

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 5:12 am Post subject:

Dave Rave wrote:
you know, some1 mentioned that the drive needs to be fdisked and formatted BEFORE it's in the external case ....

some dood named, uhm, Dave Rave
geez, you know, that's my name . strange that

I've never heard of such a thing? You can manipulate a disk in windows whether it's in an external case, or internal. Never noticed any differences.