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Drive won't format with NTFS

S

stuman19

Senior member
I just got my WD 120 GB SE drive the other day and now everytime I try to format it with Windows XP Pro, it says that setup was unable to format the partition. It says to check the cables blah blah blah.......I tried formatting it with NTFS and this is when I get the problem. If I try formatting it with FAT it will work fine. How could this be? I have tried it with two different Windows XP CD's and had the same results. I have also ran it through the WD Diagnostic utility from Floppy and everything passed. It reads the drive correctly, shows everything, passes all tests, and erased fine. What could be the problem that would make the drive format in FAT, but not NTFS? Any help is appreciated!

Thanks,
Stu
 
Step 1 in the process is a complete CHKDSK run. Try CHKDSK at the command promt with the /f and /r switches. It is a 5 stage process and will see if any files are corrupted or somehow scrwed up. If it can't pass that test, it won't format to NTFS. You might also consider trying it with PartitionMagic 8. That way you can change back any time you want for any reason. The 5 stage CHKDSK will take quite a while.

Here is the context: chkdsk /f /r
 
Did you try to FDISK the drive again, and deleting the partition, and then creating a new partition using XP?
 
Try debugging the drive, get rid of all partition info on the drive and start over. It might have EZ BIOS installed by default or from factory, for some reason.
 
Lots of good advice - and all have merit. But, the stated problem is to convert an existing installation to NTFS - not start over. The problem is probably a bad file somewhere. Unless they are all AOK, the NTFS conversion will not work.

Now, if all else fails, a complete fresh start may be the way to go, but that is, in my view the court of last resort.

If you have Norton System Works 2003, run WinDoctor and clean up registry errors and link errors - any of which can prevent the conversion.
 
do a "write zero's to the drive" and then try it... everything on the hard drive will be erased and it will be sort of like when it came from the factory...

try that and then if it doesn't work, I'd guess something was wrong with the drive.
 
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