Hard disk format trouble...

[KyleGates]

So I decided to reformat my hard drive (120gig 7200 RPM Maxtor) and am just using the format utility on a Windows XP Pro disk. Odd thing is, the format freezes at 50% when I try and run it. If I do the quick format it goes just fine but I am wanting to get a full format done...what could be causing this? Win XP Pro was on the PC earlier today and it was runnin just fine so I am very confused here...help!

 

[ThePiston]

I'd boot into an an DOS floppy and see if you can fdisk it. Try deleting all partitions and then see if you can try it again. If you have another PC, hook it up in a slave config and format it in Windows. It's weird that it always happens at 50%, I had a bad stick of ram do that to me, but it happened when I was installing Windows, not formtatting. Try and get a copy of SpinRite 6 http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm it's only 170K (written in machine code by a code god) and it wil pretty much diagnose any bad sectors you might have.