Format question

[wholeeo]

I started to format a older 8 gig seagate drive and it just stops at 15%, and it doesn't move. I ran Seatools on the drive and came up with no errors. fdisk had no problems with it either. I just can't get it to format under windows setup. Anybody have a tip. Thanks in advance.

[Matridom]

Just preformat it and install. otherwise i would suspect that your IDE controller requires special drivers that the OS does not load during startup. If yout installin nt/2k/xp there is an option on startup (f6 i think) that will allow you to install thrid party drivers.

If your looking to make the drive NTFS, then format it fat32, install windows, the use the convert program to change it to ntfs.

[AlienDyne]

I would run Scandisk to verify everything's ok. This occurs when bad sectors have been developed on the surface.

[Garak]

What is your board spec? have you tried the Ontrack software you can get from Seagate? - have you tried it in another machine, please give more info.

[korpse]

Leave it formatting overnight. It might not actually be stopping at 15%, it might be going really really slow because it found bad blocks and is marking them unusuable.

[wholeeo]

Thanks for all the great replies. I left it formating over night, and I just got back from work. It is now sitting on 17%. So obviously this thing is slow as hell. It made 2% in 8 hours. Could this thing be toast. It is in a old machine with a 350 processor. I was just going to use it as a router for my cable connection. I am not sure on how to run scandisk without being in windows. Sorry people I don't know dos. Thanks for all the help.

[BurnFEST]

Since its going to be a gateway machine, 14% of 8gig will be more than enough space could you just partition it that much?

Another way round it would be partition it to say 14%

Then start the next partition at say 20% to the end of the drive, hence skipping the problem part of the drive.

Burn.

[freddy]

locate a win98 cd , and boot from cd ,,from a a: prompt (repeat a type fdisk ,,,,kill and allocate new REBOOT , then from a d: prompt type format ,,,(under dos) ,,,,and go from there,,,

freddy

[Matridom]

[quote]Originally posted by wholeeo:
<strong>Thanks for all the great replies. I left it formating over night, and I just got back from work. It is now sitting on 17%. So obviously this thing is slow as hell. It made 2% in 8 hours. Could this thing be toast. It is in a old machine with a 350 processor. I was just going to use it as a router for my cable connection. I am not sure on how to run scandisk without being in windows. Sorry people I don't know dos. Thanks for all the help.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I have a trick boot disk that will skip the surface scan has part of the partitioning... Don't know if you want to try it. Sounds like a toasty HDD. If ya want it let me know.

[confus-ed]

[quote]Originally posted by wholeeo:
<strong>.... I left it formating over night, and I just got back from work. It is now sitting on 17%. ..... It made 2% in 8 hours. Could this thing be toast.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Part of the disk is damaged or the mbr is screwy, see if it will zero fill, whatever utility does that should identify whether there are damaged sectors & how many. Does the BIOS see the drive correctly always?

[Garak]

Download the Diag software from Seagate, that will tell you weather the drive is toasted or not, I have posted the link in an either post (different topic though)

[wholeeo]

I used the seatools and there is nothing wrong with it but I am tired of messin with it. I pitched it, and will just order a new wd today. Thanks for the help guys.