Can't Reformat Hard Drive!!

raptorman

One of my PC's crashed big time and has forced me to do a full format, but when I try with my XP disc it fails to format. A friend of mine has recommended http://www.killdisk.com/ to wipe the hard drive completely and then try reinstalling. Anybody used this before, anything I need to do aswell as using KillDisk?

Red_Rose_Exile

Have you made sure that your PC is set to boot primarily from CD rather than hard drive? This needs to be done in the BIOS.

Usually to get into BIOS, you press the DEL key as you PC starts up

Once in, depending on your BIOS, use the arrow keys to navigate to the Boot tab and press enter

Once there scroll to the Boot sequence and set it up so that the CD drive is set as the Primary Boot source.

Now Press Esc and scroll to Save and Exit

Put your Windows CD in the cd drive and reboot

You should then press Enter when you see the boot from CD option

Follow the CD to re-install

custardy

yup as said above,or does it boot to the install process but fail to format from there?
could be a dead HD

raptorman

It boots to the install screen, then I selected 'delete partition' and then format as NTFS. The format starts but doesn't complete. Out of interest I tried installing Ubuntu Linux to see if the hard drive was at fault but Ubuntu installed fine, so I don't think the HD is faulty.

KILL_BILL

raptorman wrote: »

It boots to the install screen, then I selected 'delete partition' and then format as NTFS. The format starts but doesn't complete. Out of interest I tried installing Ubuntu Linux to see if the hard drive was at fault but Ubuntu installed fine, so I don't think the HD is faulty.

what error message do you get ?

superscaper

Last time I had problems formatting a drive couple of months ago (installing win98 on old machine), ubuntu also installed fine but windows was having problems and I couldn't format. I used DBAN to wipe the disk and everything was fine after that.

unrich

Master Boot Record problem perhaps? have a search for "repair XP MBR".

I assume you have a floppy drive (not a great assumption).

If you want a faster check to see if the disk is OK get a DOS boot disk or Win98 boot disk.

Boot from the floppy then> format c: /mbr,
reboot and then> format c: /s
remove disk and reboot
it should boot from the hard disk to a c: prompt

Whilst this doesn't install XP it does check the disk can be formatted and the MBR is not corrupt and will hold the correct information about the disk.

You can also make a bootable CDROM from a floppy disk using Nero or the like which you can use on PCs with no floppy. Or to make a bootable USB key there's an HP utility.

jesus_disciple

If his hard drive is already formatted to NTFS, booting with a floppy and typing c:/mbr won't do anything because DOS doesn't recognise hd's in NTFS format. It'll just come up with something about "can't find c:/ .

Persevere with the install using the XP disc, larger (over 40 MB) hard drives take ages to format, often 1 to 2 hours! Always select NTFS too because it makes XP run much more reliably.

unrich

If you read and understood the post it is purely to prove the disk is intact and functioning. (and if the op has a FDD)

I may have forgotten to add the fdisk bit. i.e. Use fdisk to delete the NTFS partition and create a FAT16/32 one.

I'd rather invest 20 minutes proving the disk is OK than to persevere for a few hours and find out I was on a hiding to nothing because the MBR couldn't save any changes! Its what I'd do on site if I had an installation failing.

sco0ter

Have you tried running any programs to look for bad sectors first.??? Windows has mega problems with bad sectors and wont skip them but will constantly try to write to them

PistonBroke_2

I've a had a problem Formatting a Disk Lately in fact i'm Still having problems :eek: i was gonna use Killdisk next but am currently trying to use Seagates own software to delete the HD the first attempt failed at 4% the second is up to about 70% so fingers crossed it'll work this time

Could be Worth a try if your Disk is Seagate or Maxtor check the Seagate website out or if it's western digital i know they do a similar software any others and i really don;t have a clue i'm afraid