Disk Write Error when installing Win 98

[mtnagel]

I'm setting up an old system for my daughter and I formatted the 40 gb hd and tried to install Win 98, but I get a blue screen with Disk Write Error. Does this mean there is something wrong with the hard drive?

Thanks for any help?

 

[johnjkr1]

Perhaps you could try running the diagnostic on the hard drive from the manuf? Usually, if a hard drive can format, it should be ok. Have you tried another cd or cdrom?

 

[mastertech01]

Could be. You could try doing a zero fill low level format on the drive to see if it clears up the problem, but if it continues getting write errors the drive is likely bad. Only thing else I can think of off the top of my head with an old setup is possibly an improper bios setting for LBA. (other than defective hardware like cables, bent pins)

 

[redbeard1]

Just how old is the system? Is it possible that it is having problems with the 40 gig drive, just because of it's size? Sometimes the bios seems to see the drive properly, but windows reads it in a different way, and has issues.

 

[mtnagel]

Originally posted by: johnjkr1
Perhaps you could try running the diagnostic on the hard drive from the manuf? Usually, if a hard drive can format, it should be ok. Have you tried another cd or cdrom?

It's not the cd, because I took out the 40 gb hd and put in a 6 gb hd and that worked just fine. Should be good enough to get my daughter started with some games, but eventually it will need a bigger drive.

 

[mtnagel]

Originally posted by: mastertech01
Could be. You could try doing a zero fill low level format on the drive to see if it clears up the problem, but if it continues getting write errors the drive is likely bad. Only thing else I can think of off the top of my head with an old setup is possibly an improper bios setting for LBA. (other than defective hardware like cables, bent pins)

Could you tell me how to do a "zero fill low level format"? I tried running scandisk, but didn't feel like waiting for the 5 hrs to do the surface scan - neither could my daughter (she's a normally impatient 8-yr old).

 

[mtnagel]

Originally posted by: redbeard1
Just how old is the system? Is it possible that it is having problems with the 40 gig drive, just because of it's size? Sometimes the bios seems to see the drive properly, but windows reads it in a different way, and has issues.

hmmmm? I have had this drive on this pc for at least a couple years, but I seem to maybe remember having problems installing it - the pc is from about mid-1999 and it's a 350 mHz PII, 196 mb RAM, and 16 mb PCI graphics card. But, I'm pretty sure I've done a format before and was able to install Windows without any problems. I do have the disk that came with the Western Digital drive - maybe I can try that?

I didn't really want to have to write all the details, but, Redbeard, you might remember a couple days ago, I had an error from Partition Magic when merging 2 partitions (NTFS) together. I finally recovered my data and was ready to just wipe the drive clean, so I (stupidly) put in the Win 98 start-up disk to do a format, but of course Win 98 didn't like the NTFS file system, so I was able to use the Win XP cd to finally format the drive. Then Win 98 let me run the set up on the clean drive (though that doesn't make sense since it would still be NTFS after the XP format, correct?) Well, anyway, Win 98 let me do the install, but when it would get to a certain point in the install, I would get the write disk error. I tried it twice and that's when I decided to just pop on the old 6 gb hd just to get the system up and running.

So, there's the long version if that changes anything.

Thanks everyone for your responses so far.
Matthew

 

[LiLithTecH]

The BEST drive eraser (zero fill) period.

Active@ KillDisk

 

[mtnagel]

Originally posted by: LiLithTecH
The BEST drive eraser (zero fill) period.

Active@ KillDisk

I see it works on all file system, but does it work with partitions? Does it completely get rid of them?

Matthew

 

[LiLithTecH]

Third feature down.

KillDisk Features

 

[johnjkr1]

you should probably get the diagnostics from the drive maker and make sure it passes...most of the diag utilities also include a low level format option

 

[LiLithTecH]

Its not a good idea to do a LOW LEVEL FORMAT on ANY IDE DRIVE.
(some older BIOS utilities would allow this). It will destroy any modern IDE Drive.

Zero'ing the drive is not the same as LOW LEVEL FORMAT.

Low Level Formats are based on the logical geometry of the drive that is
that is done at the manufacturing stage.

Zero'ing a drive is just removing data.
The more times you zero it, the less chance the data has to be recovered.

 

[johnjkr1]

I checked with Maxtor, they seem to think that a low level format is still perfectly fine for IDE drives, especially ones with bad sectors. Their disk utilities include a low level format option.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, etc. are to lazy to actually explain what
their utilities do. They actually are misleading people when they
say LOW LEVEL FORMAT as all it really does is zero(s) out the data.

What KillDisk does is zero(s) out the drive data multiple times if you
want to be certain that the data is actually unretreivable.