Formatting Questions (Help)

[Jayarem]

Greetings to all.

I'm needing a little help regarding the partitioning and formatting of a "Quantum Fireball EX" 3.2G HDD
that I acquired from my sister.

1.) After going thru the steps of "DELETE/CREATE" partitions (single DOS partition) and then on to
FORMAT C:/S (and the ususal WARNING! about all data being lost) we come to:

"PROCEED WITH FORMAT (Y/N)?Y"

Formatting begins:

"FORMATTING 4,110.34M"

All goes as expected until:

"75 PERCENT COMPLETED"

at which point the prompt changes to:

"TRYING TO RECOVER ALLOCATION UNIT" and begins counting from 24,000.

Ten hours later the count is at 845,000 and climbing. Could someone PLEASE try to explain this to me? What does it mean?
is there any way to hasten/speed-up this process?

(NOTE: I did halt the process by "POWER OFF/POWER ON" and went thru the steps again.
This time the count starts at 845,000.)

2.) One more question:

What is meant by "Low Level" formatting, are there any dangers involved with this (I've heard there are), how is it accomplished,
what does it do as compared to "FORMAT C:/S" and what is the "switch" for it?

Thanks in advance.

 

[hominid skull]

Sounds like your sister gave you a bad disk. What the drive is trying to do is test and recover allocation units on the disk that have previously been marked bad. As you have just found out, there a lots of allocation units on a single drive.

AFAIK low level formatting the drive will get rid of the bad sectors/allocation units but the underlying problem will probably still be there. Some mobo's have a low level format option in the bios, an old celeron that i used to have had it. I have never had a problem with low level formatting, it's just i have never solved anything with it either. Problems with the disk that were there before the LLF raised the heads after aswell.

Try completing the format on you drive, when it's done you can them hopefully install windows. After try and fill the drive up with lots of apps and games just to test the whole of the disk, if you start getting read/write errors then you might aswell bin the disk.

Hope it helps.

 

[Jayarem]

hominid,

Thanks for your reply. Will do as you suggest.
But, just for future reference:
How do you initiate the LLF? Is there a "switch" like "A:\>FORMAT C:/S"?

Thanks again,

 

[Vinny N]

LLF format is iniated by a BIOS, or by another program.
I don't think DOS/Windows comes with any sort of low level format utility.

 

[Usul]

All ABIT cards come with a llf utility.
What about format c: \q?
Does it says thet cannot be done and switch to the slow format?

 

[Vinny N]

All ABIT cards come with a llf utility.

The motherboards or controller cards? I never seen any come with any Abit product...


What about format c: \q?

That's a quick format, it's for a drive that has been previously fully formatted.


Does it says thet cannot be done and switch to the slow format?

Yeah that's a full format, but definitely not a low level format since it definitely doesn't wipe partitions.

 

[Jayarem]

Hello again and thanks for your responses.

Ok, here's something I forgot to mention before;

This "Quantum Fireball" HDD is not the main drive for this pc. I simply unplugged my other one a "Western Digital Caviar" 4.3G HDD and plugged in the Quantum.

The Quantum IS a 3.2G drive (I downloaded a file from Quantum "Quantum Data Eraser" that makes a bootable floppy which examines the drive for errors (there are none) and lets you erase all partitions and data on the disk) but when attempting "format c:/s" it is saying 4110.34m (there's a linux partition on the WD which I'm assuming would account for the fact that not all of the 4.3G is accounted for) instead of 32??m (or whatever 3.2G would translate to).

Could this be the reason that the formatting process is "TRYING TO RECOVER ALLOCATION UNIT" when it reaches "75 PERCENT COMPLETED"? Does the computer "think" it's formatting the 4.3G WD HDD and NOT the 3.2G QFB? What's actually running this whole show anyway? Is it the BIOS? Am I supposed to change something in the BIOS (which I'm assuming must be "seeing" the WD HDD) before I attempt to format this drive? If so, what do I change and how would that impact the WD when I re-connect it?

It isn't my intention to use this drive as the primary. I simply wanted to try my had at partitioning/formatting and installing the OS on a drive that doesn't contain any valuable data before I "wipe" the WD which is starting to fill-up, and I don't see the sense in continuing to pay someone $25-30 to do what I SHOULD be able to do myself everytime the drive needs re-formatting. It is my intention, however, to "SLAVE" the QFB to the WD at some point in the near future. But THAT'S a different story and I'll cross THAT bridge when I get there.

I DO hope you'll forgive/overlook my ignorance in such matters as partitioning/formatting of a HDD which to most of you must seem quite a simple task. I'm not totally ignorant about PC's though. I CAN drive the H.ll out of Win98 and I DID successfully overclock this AMDK6-2 300 to 350MHz without a hitch and with no fear. I suppose it's the fact that the partitioning/formatting process is all done in "text-mode" and not in a GUI that makes it/has ALWAYS made it seem so mysterious and forbidding to me.

Thanks again for all your help and advice and your response(s) WILL be eagerly awaited.

 

[Vinny N]

This "Quantum Fireball" HDD is not the main drive for this pc. I simply unplugged my other one a "Western Digital Caviar" 4.3G HDD and plugged in the Quantum.

Okay, so the Quantum Fireball drive is the only hard drive that should be in the system at this point right?

The Quantum IS a 3.2G drive (I downloaded a file from Quantum "Quantum Data Eraser" that makes a bootable floppy which examines the drive for errors (there are none) and lets you erase all partitions and data on the disk)

*The Quantum drive, is the only drive in the system, and you're absolutely certain it is only 3.2gb?
Is your motherboard's BIOS identifying the drive correctly? If it wasn't set on auto, it may be forcing the Western Digital 4.3gb drive's settings on the Quantum drive. Go into the BIOS and check, or better yet, redetect the hard drives.

but when attempting "format c:/s" it is saying 4110.34m (there's a linux partition on the WD which I'm assuming would account for the fact that not all of the 4.3G is accounted for) instead of 32??m (or whatever 3.2G would translate to).

Please clarify this part, you're unclear right after about 5 words

A 4.3gb drive is 4,300,000,000 bytes in hard drive manufacturer's definition of a gigabyte (1000^3). But 4,300,000,000 is about 4,110,000,000 when using the computer definition of a gigabyte (1024^3) So all of the space seems to be accounted for.


Could this be the reason that the formatting process is "TRYING TO RECOVER ALLOCATION UNIT" when it reaches "75 PERCENT COMPLETED"? Does the computer "think" it's formatting the 4.3G WD HDD and NOT the 3.2G QFB? What's actually running this whole show anyway?

That would be an awfully strange reason for the error. I hope the WD HDD is not physically hooked up and being formatted by accident. (not to mention that would mean, it has the bad sectors) Please clarify your text above.


Is it the BIOS? Am I supposed to change something in the BIOS (which I'm assuming must be "seeing" the WD HDD) before I attempt to format this drive? If so, what do I change and how would that impact the WD when I re-connect it?

Yes, see second paragraph of my reply (it's *) about detection the BIOS. If you set it to auto, it should always use the correct settings for whatever drive is connected. If you detect the drives in the BIOS, it will change the configuration to be specific for that drive and you would have to redetect whenever you change hard drives (but that shouldn't be very often unless you're got removeable bays )

 

[Jayarem]

Success!

I am now running from the QFB.
You were right Vinny. The BIOS was forcing the WD's drive settings on the QFB.
A little tinkering with the BIOS and voila!

My thanks again to everyone for there kind help.
Now I know I can do this correctly.

My sincerest gratitude,