Problems Formatting

[Farrar]

I am having a problem formatting a hard drive and I just want to get an opinion on the problem.

While in DOS, as it is starting the process, the message comes up that it is trying to relocate a data sector or something similar to that. After several hours, it is still at 29%. Then it will advance to 30% and the message appears again. The percentage is advancing but painfully slow. At this rate, it would take 10 to 20 hours! Does this indicate a failing hard drive?

Thanks,

Jeff Farrar

[shawnMt]

Just to be sure you could try formatting it on another board to rule out the IDE controller but it sounds like a dying drive.

You could also try writing zeros to it with wddiag or other util...

------------------
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted

Paint your old laptop!

[Machine]

You have the hard drive configured wrong in the bios

remove all the drives in standard setup, than do an autodetect, save it, than reboot and retry to format. That should fix it.

[techs]

i have seen the same thing, and yes it indicates bad sectors, try being very patient, it once took me about 10 hours til all the bad sectors where marked off, and sometimes the disk runs well thereafter. This may or may not indicate a failing hard drive. sometimes you will get some due to a power surge, and no more will occur, sometimes they will continue to spread and the drive must be replaced

[Farrar]

Thanks for the help guys. I have ordered a replacement drive which was covered under the warranty.

Thanks again,

Jeff