Bob Seeley said:
Hi Anna
Well, patitioned yes, formatted no. All attempts to format it, regardless
of
what utility I use, Recovery Console, XP Disk Management, whatever, after
30
minutes of what appears to be a successful process of formatting, results
at
100% with the message, "The format did not complete successfully".
No. I just bought this new HD, the same make and model as the one that was
in in my computer when I bought it, in hopes of creating a mirror so that
I
wouldn't have to go through the same tiring process of reinstalling XP
again,
which happened to me about a week ago when Partition Magic 8 wiped out my
MBR
and nothing (fixmbr, etc) would successfully get my hard drive to repair.
Hmm. Well, I don't have an old Win9x/Me floppy, and if I did I would worry
about it dealing with a 60GB HD. I might see if XP Disk Management will
format it FAT32 and if it will, then deal with the conversion to NTFS.
I did go back and run the Hard Disk manufacturer's utility program to
check
the disk. It was via a floppy disk resident program. After what seemed
like
forever it came back with the same message as before, that the hard drive
had
passed all tests (including a search for any bad sectors).
Yeah, I know that.
I did that. Like you said, Diskpart will only add or delete a partition.
I'm at my wits end on this. If you have any more comments, I'd appreciate
it.
Bob:
An interesting problem. And thanks for your clear response.
No, Disk Management will not format your 60 GB HD FAT32. XP has a 32 GB
limitation involving formatting a disk FAT32. Presumably, as a last resort,
you could create two (or more) partitions, each one not exceeding 32 GB and
format them FAT32 (presuming there would be no problem with the formatting
routine) and subsequently perform the NTFS conversion. But that's a rather
tortuous workaround that I'm not fond of and besides, I'm not sure if it's
even workable.
And, of course, you're absolutely sure you've correctly configured/connected
that secondary HD, right? Absolutely sure.
And I suppose you've tried to format the drive a number of times using the
DM utility, but each time it failed, right? Always at the same point, at the
end of the formatting process?
JS recommendation re trying a quick format may have some merit. If memory
serves me correctly that once worked for us too except it was during an XP
install process as I recall. But it might be worth a try in your situation.
When you were originally able to use the DM utility to partition the drive
(I assume it's a single partition, right?) it initialized properly (it was a
"virgin" HD, yes?) and the partition was created with no problem, right?
All in all, I would guess if all else fails or is impractical, formatting
the disk FAT32 using a DOS boot disk as has been mentioned would be the way
to go - again, followed by a NTFS conversion. And, of course, assuming the
drive *could* be formatted FAT32. I believe software to create a DOS boot
floppy disk is available from a number of websites, one of the more popular
being the one at
http://www.bootdisk.com
A thought just occurred to me...
You say you're planning to use that 60 GB HD "in hopes of creating a
mirror". I assume from that that you're planning to use a disk imaging
program to (routinely) clone the contents of your working HD to the 60 GB
one in order to maintain a backup system. If that is the case, then the disk
cloning process should solve this problem since it will, in effect, transfer
over the partition(s) & formatting of your source disk. Hopefully, that
should resolve this problem. You need not partition/format the drive prior
to the disk cloning operation.
Anna
