NTFS Format Problems in XP

[FINGERS20]

I stupidly opened up an E-Mail attachment containing a virus because I thought the message was a genuine Microsoft warning................How daft can you get!!!!. Anyhow, upshot was I took the bull by the horns and went for a format and re-install of windows. Things went sweetly until I came to the format screen using the full NTFS (i.e. not the quick format method) method when the format stuck on 87%. Even after a restart and going through the procedure again it still stuck on 87% of full format. I was mightily mystified as things seemed to go O.K. when using the quick format method. I couldn't recall any problems when I formatted my system in April of this year. Went on line on my works laptop and after a bit of searching I discovered that the difference between a quick format and normal is that there is no check of the integrity of the hard drive with the quick format method. Installed windows and sure enough, CHKDSK reported bad clusters in several places which were automatically noted and repaired under NTFS system. It would seem to me that the reason the hard drive format stuck on 87% was due to faulty sectors on the hard drive, which by the way is a Raid Array made from two 40 gig IBM Deskstars, though I don't think this makes any difference! I guess I should be concerned that one or both of the hard drives are suspect and I should be ready for problems. Maybe that virus did me a favour!
Just thought I would pass on this experience/information to other forum members and maybe a real expert out there could put me right on my supposition. Keep an old man from Scotland happy.Text

 

[Dahak]

You are right about the difference between the quick and long format. what you should do if it is comming up sector/clustor errors is grab the Hitachi/IBM diag tools from here and if one of the drives is bad I would replace it

(IBM sold all there hard drive assests to Hitachi in late 2002 if you didnt know but all warrenties and support are still valid)

 

[DannyBoy]

And the motto of the story is dont buy a Deathstar in future

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: DannyBoy
And the motto of the story is dont buy a Deathstar in future

You cant,they dont sell them anymore.

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: Budman

Originally posted by: DannyBoy
And the motto of the story is dont buy a Deathstar in future

You cant,they dont sell them anymore.

That is a very valid point...

Ive not been around for a little while bud

p.s. Dont buy a second hand one in future

 

[FINGERS20]

Thanks for your input on my problem. Much appreciate the help. Followed the link to Hitachi web site and seemed an awful complicated way of diagnosing hard drive failure. Was thinking of taking each hard drive in turn out of the raid array and installing on a normal IDE channel and then try to format in XP. I know that this will destroy my existing windows setup but what the hell. Would then use the hopefully one remaining good drive to reinstall windows on a normal IDE channel......
Unless of course it is possible to use these diagnostic tools over the top of existing information as I presume they work in DOS and I could perhaps diagnose the problem but still have the information left on the hard drive? Will have to study the Hitachi site closely. I guess this problem I have explains Photoshop crashing out to BSOD when playing around with large files. Microsoft on-line crash analysis would always insist it was a "device drver" that was causing the problem, which I seriously doubted as one time it told me the modem driver was the problem. This has only hastened my proposed build of a new P4 system..........I will of couse be steering clear of IBM. A pair of Western Digital 10,000rpm Raptors will fit the bill nicely I think.