Can't Format my Harddrive 1

[sprude27]

I have a new hard drive and I am trying to install Win2k. I can't not complete the install because the setup tells me the partition is either unformatted of damaged. I tried to format using FAT32 and NTFS at the end of the process it tells me disk could not be formated. I ever FDisk the Drive and formated it with that tool. No change. Scandisk tells me there are no problems with the disk. Does anyone have a possible solution? Is my hard drive bad? It's a 30GB 7200 Western Digital.

Stephen

 

[osuman]

I would first try downloading Western Digitals utilities off thier website. It's called Data Lifeguard Tools. I don't think it's a really great program but it does have diagnostic, partitioning, and formatting utilities. It's a bootable disk also that is much quicker than the Win 2000 setup disks which take forever. Try using that to run some quick diagnostics and then partition and format with it.

If you don't want to use that and try FDISK again then do the following:

1) Run FDisk and delete the all partitions. (If you have any)
2) Restart
3) Run FDisk and Create a partition.
4) Restart
5) Format the partition.
6) Restart and verify that the volume has been created.
7) Restart and run the 2000 setup again and see if it works.

Good Luck. Justin

Feel free to email me at:
beckham@mailbox.orst.edu

"3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population."

 

[mussussu]

try doing a low level format

 

[osuman]

The disk that I mentioned also contains a zero-fill utility (this is often incorrectly referred to as a low level format). Within the software it refers to this as "writing zeros to the drive" and it will take at least an hour. Not only does this completly toast everything, it encorporates a diagnostic test with it. A zero-fill is also safer than a true low level format. Justin

Feel free to email me at:
beckham@mailbox.orst.edu

"3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population."