Hard Drive Format Troubles

[kevlar557 0]

I'm trying to format my slave drive, which had linux on it. I have it in my wiondows machine, and I tried to format it. It says that the format was complete, but after it asks for a label in CMD, it says that the format failed. The hard drive is a WD Caviar 30 gig, on IDE 2 slave.

[iGuest 3]

If you have not done so, you should remove the partitions using fdisk or other partion manager, you then have to recreate the partition suitable for Windows.After doing that, you should format the drive.Cheers,MC

[kevlar557 0]

I used the XP set-up disk to delete all of the partitions on the drive, but still no dice. I even tried formatting it as a FAT32, instead of a NTFS.

[evion 0]

Hey about this formating topic, I'm curious about my own formating problem. I was using my old Windows 98 computer one day and tried to upload some files onto a floppy disk. I got as far as pushing the floppy into the drive. After that, the computer asks me if it can format the disk. I played dumb and went along with the instructions on the screen. The whole process took a heck of a long time and when it was all done i was presented with an error message that tells me that something wrong happened during the process of formatting the disk. Game over. What did i do? Ejected the floppy disk, and slammed it back in the drive. THis time, it miraculously worked....How marvelous was that? Anybody have any ideas? Was it a driver problem?

[Rudy1405241475 0]

In your case techocian the floppy has bad sectors where the file allocation table is (fat). The machine read it the second time you stuck it in after a few tries but one of these days it will fail for good. Your best bet to copy the data somewhere else for safe keeping.I agree with mastercomputers, and suggest you run fdisk and remove all the partitions.

[kevlar557 0]

I did remove all of the partitions on the drive, but it will still not format. I tried downloading the Data Lifeguard Tools from the WD website, but that would not work either. I'm really starting to get despirate. Should I just buy a new drive, or does someone have a way to get this POS working?

[shihchiun 0]

If you've already deleted all the partitions, all you should need to do is create a new partition. I'd consider buying a new drive, since 30 GB isn't all that big.

[Sadas 0]

You said slave disc? So that means there are another HDD on your system? If so then remove master HDD and leave only slave HDD in your system. And set it as master of course. Then try formating and creating partittions in all ways you know. First of all try Windows XP CD. If it doesn't work, try Win98 floppy disc FORMAT and FDISC tools.Hope this helps... Keep us updated about your problem