Double checking a drive?

Priapus

Priapus

Priapus

Soldato
Joined
30 Jul 2004
Posts
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East Sussex, United Kingdom
Howzit Guys,

I've got a 80GB SATA drive here. Tried to install Windows on it just now and when I formatted the drive, well, tried to. The Windows Setup gave me an error saying it could not format the drive, as it may be damaged or something along those lines. So I took it out and put a 160Gb in and Windows is busy formatting that then will install, I hope.

So, what I want to know, is there is sure way of telling if the drive is definitely faulty?

It's a Hitachi Deskstar 80Gb SATA drive.

Thanks guys.

:)
 
Hmm, I've done the check; it seems to be okay. Maybe I should just use it as a back up drive or something?

Or could it still be faulty?
 
It could still be faulty I suppose the tool doesn't discover a problem there's not much to do about. I assume you've checked it for bad sectors and that sort of thing (or more likely the diagnostic tool did).

If it's under warranty RMA it. If not relegate it to backup duty if you're not cinfident in its abilities.
 
you can try:
1-running chkdsk or scandisk
2-take the drive, bang it on the table a couple of times and send it back, they give you a shiny new one for your peace of mind

jokes apart, re-try the install of Win like you did the first time, it should go now.

May be it could have been formatted first by booting up with a win98 boot floppy and formatted using the format command eg format c: this will take some time, once done Windows would have definitely installed.
 
randeesha said:
May be it could have been formatted first by booting up with a win98 boot floppy and formatted using the format command eg format c: this will take some time, once done Windows would have definitely installed.
Click to expand...
Windows 98 did not support the NTFS file system. This lack of support extends to its formatting utility IIRC.
 
Ja, it's not possible to format a drive using the Windows 98 floppy disk. However I will doa full scan check and try Windows on it again, tonight.

Thanks guys.
 
Ice On Fire said:
Ja, it's not possible to format a drive using the Windows 98 floppy disk.
Click to expand...

it is possible.
what I meant is to format the drive at FAT32, then windows will format it again and there you can select NFTS file system which is more appropriate and offers a series of benefits available to the new NT Microsoft family of Operating Systems that drastically changed with the introduction of Win2k.
Anyway, this formatting thingy I do it all the time, I can even delete the partition using fdisk (it's in the floppy), restart in the floppy boot disk (not really necessary but I like it to reboot after any change), create a new partition for the full capacity of the drive (it is automatically marked as active) and restart again, run the command format c: off the RAM drive (virtual drive) which contains the floppy files and wait for it to be formatted. Then restart with the cd in it and XP install will prompt you to format again.
 
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