How long to format a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV?

[Rob G.]

Odd question, I know.

My 80gb Barracuda ATA IV arrived this morning. I've split it into two partitions (extended DOS, FAT32) of 30gb and the rest of the drive.

I set up the partitions with GDISK (FDISK replacement that comes with Ghost). I left the second partition formatting while I went out this afternoon. Came back 2.5 hours later and the format was only on about 28%!!!!

Is this right? I can format an entire 46gb IBM 75GXP in less than an hour (though I've never sat down and timed it). In the end I gave up and applied an empty Ghost image to it.

I mean, I know 80gb is a big hard drive, but surely it shouldn't be quite that slow to format?

Operation of the drive otherwise seems fine.

 

[ndee]

Nah, shouldn't be that slow. My 40GB harddrive went pretty fast. I made a 5GB partition, 17.5GB and another 17.5GB partition. Installed Win2k to the 5GB partition, and formated from Win2k the other partitions. Didn't take longer than 1 minute.

 

[Pariah]

It will take 3 years in DOS. Only format the partition that will contain the OS in DOS. Once the OS is installed, format the other partitions in windows which will take significantly less time.

 

[Rob G.]

I did for the first partition and it a lot faster, but Windows 2000 will not let you format a FAT32 partition bigger than 32gb - I believe.

 

[Megatomic]

<< I did for the first partition and it a lot faster, but Windows 2000 will not let you format a FAT32 partition bigger than 32gb - I believe. >>



Using the fdisk and format found in Win98 I can setup my 45GB Maxtor drive in one FAT32 partition.

 

[Pariah]

"Windows 2000 will not let you format a FAT32 partition bigger than 32gb - I believe."

That's correct, partition magic may allow you to do it in win2k. Otherwise, DOS or win98 are your only options.

 

[Atlantean]

I have the same harddrive, and once I had to re-format it and that took like 3 hours, and as for formating it, I don't think it took that long