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Problem formatting harddrive.

D

ddeder

Golden Member
When the format is only 3% complete, I get the message:

Trying to recover allocation unit ##### (can't remember the exact number)

A minute or two later this message disappears and formatting continues.

At about 62% complete, I get the message:

Trying to recover allocation unit 1,064,410

This message has been on my screen for 10 or 15 minutes now and nothing seems to be happening.

Is this indicative of a bad sectors on the harddrive?

The reason I am formatting is that the computer would not boot into Windows anymore. I would get to the Safe Mode menu and select Safe Mode or Step by Step and either way, the computer locked up before getting into Windows (ME). I was able to boot from a Windows 98 startup disk and view the file structure. This allowed me to back up important files to a floppy from the DOS prompt. When I tried to run scandisk, it would get to the Directory Structure part, find an error, instructed me to do a surface scan when it got that far and then proceded to lock up.

It has now been a good 20 minutes and the error message remains on my screen. Think I will try Western Digital's diagnostic program...
 
Sounds like the drive has a lot of bad sectors, and may be fuxored beyond repair, but what do I know. I just can't figure how you are going to get it booted unless WD diagnostic utility has something that helps, otherwise an RMA is in order if at all possible.
 
Yes, you probably have alot of errors on there. A HD with bad sectors will take a long time, and next to forever if it has a lot of them.
 
I ran Western Digital's utility software, and it said it found errors and fixed them all. The disk is now working fine.

I was just wondering, when it says it found errors, what type of errors did it find? Bad sectors? Can bad sectors be repaired? I thought when a disk developed bad sectors it was on the way out... Or can some bad sectors be repaired while others cannot (and it is only when the later type is present that the disk is going bad).
 
If it found and fixed them they will be back. It's about to crap out. There really isn't a soft way to break this sort of news to you, bud.
 
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