Odd formatting problem. *update* (problems fixed, new question)

[Zeeliv]

Ok I'm helping put together a comp for a friend with a bunch of parts from different comps. He wanted the HDD's (a 13GB maxtor and a 6.4GB Quantum Bigfoot) divided up into small partitions so I do that and then I'm formatting all of them and now I'm doing the last partition on the bigfoot and it says this:

Trying to recover allocation unit 272,836

and it's counting up about 1 number a second. Now what I want to know is 1. what this means (this isn't normal, has something happened like a bad sector or something?) 2. should I let it continue? because if that is gonna count up to 3GB (the size of this partition) that will take about 31 days to finish...which is ludicrous.

 

[jbond]

You have bad sectors on the drive. And yes it will take for ever if all sectors are bad. Not to mention that now a 13gig drive is a 4gig. At price of drives toss it and get new one.

 

[medic]

First thing would be to get out of that and check that all your partitions don't add up to over 100%.
I have read a few posts where people have tried to divide up their disk to exactly 100% and in reality it was 101+ and format will hang.
Another possibility is to set the bad drive up as only 80% or so of capacity...for instance if the format stalled at about 80% on the 6.4G try setting up a 4.5-5.G partition and format it and leave the bad sectors on the unallocated section of the disk.

 

[Zeeliv]

Ok, it was stalling about 15-20% through the second partition(there were 2 3GB partitions), so I made it a 4GB and formatted and it went through ok. But isn't this just a temporary solution? I mean I've heard that once some sectors go bad the drive will eventually die. Thanks by the way.

 

[Zeeliv]

Just put 98SE on the C: partition of the 13GB and now it won't boot correctly. I'm feeling like a total newbie again...there's some EZ BIOS crap on it. Just after post but before windows starts up I get this:

EZ-BIOS: Initializing...
EZ-BIOS: Hold the CTRL key down for Status Screen or to boot from floppy...
EZ-BIOS: Continuing Startup

Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, and then press any key

I can use a boot floppy and go into DOS and everything seems to be on C: that is needs to boot up normally. Ugh

 

[Zeeliv]

ttt

 

[medic]

Actually if the bad sector is left in an unallocated space then barring your drive isn't progressively failing then you could be fine for a year at least in a few posts I read on a few message boards.
My policy though if a drive has bad sectors is to RMA it without hesitation.
If the bios and board are fairly new then you shouldn't need that EZBios crap anyway. You will need to use the drive disk that you installed EZBios to remove it, then you can make a partition or two, format it, and run scandisk (drive: )/surface from a W98 full floppy and see if you isolated the bad sector.
Remember if you originally added all your partitions together and they equaled 100%+, that could of produced your error and you should remove EZBios and try for a partition total of 97-98%.

 

[Zeeliv]

Anyone happen to have EZ-Drive laying around on floppy that they could Email me? I just need version 5.02u or later to remove this thing because the original disk was thrown away or lost it looks like. I went to their site and you have to pay for the newest version (which I don't even need) or you can download an upgrade patch for your old version for free...but I don't have the old disk.

 

[medic]

CYM
Sharkeeper has a good point, make sure the drive is detected properly in the bios. (autodetect)

 

[imhotepmp]

If i rememeber correctly Maxtor's site has this utility which creates the Ez Drive on the drive. Check maxtor site for a setup program, and if you cant find it lmk and ill email it to you.

imhotepmp

 

[Zeeliv]

Maxblast (the utility they use now) doesn't do what I need to do (disable 2 options in the EZ-BIOS that will get rid of it). Thanks for trying, but I still need EZ-Drive to get rid of it.

 

[medic]

Some info on removing it:
http://www.firmware.com/support/bios/diskmgr.htm

According to StorageSoft EZ-Drive is up to version 9.xx now and you have to purchase it..
I use to have a link though...will keep looking...

 

[Zeeliv]

positive (well, I think so anyway...this comp has me unsure of my abilities), it used to be used on maxtor's as well.

http://www.maxtor.com/press/nr012297.html

 

[Zeeliv]

Ok, after finally getting ahold of EZ-Drive from another friend and uninstalling it I finally got NT4 SP6 onto the drive (the maxtor, not the flaky bigfoot). Now I think I've finally figured out what's wrong with the bigfoot...no matter what utility or part of any setup detects it's size it says that it is 4320MB, now I looked on Quantums site and that is the exact size of the Bigfoot CY that has 2 platters (this one has 3, as it is/was 6.4GB). So I assume this means one of the platters has died or something? I formatted it and I'm gonna tell the guy not to put anything too deathly important on it just in case, that sound about right?