HARD DRIVE PROBS!

[wase4711]

I feel funny asking but..

Last night I did some bad stuff to my PC; started wiping the HD, and stopped in the middle; then, did a full O&O defrag and went to sleep..
Woke up to BSOD, and "Hard drive may be damaged" message..

Can't do a complete format; it stops 1/2 through and says hd may be damaged...

Any suggestions or ideas?

I know I should have known better, but sometimes you just do stupid stuff!


wase4711

[Stringent]

Try a low level format of the hard drive and see if that resets it back. It will wipe the WHOLE drive regardless of any partitions, they will be wiped too.

[unicorn]

Or you can try to ZAP it first just to see what happens. A low level format is a tedious task and seldom necessary, sort of very last resort.
ZAP can be found at IBM and is a utility that erases all partition information.

[wase4711]

I think I am on the road to recovery now; one question:
How long should it take to convert a 120 gig from fat 32 to NTFS?

I installed win 98 cause I had a restoration cd; now, I am installing the OEM XP home version, and it was going very well ; It asked me if I wanted to convert to NTFS, which, of course, I do, so I am going through the process. There is no "progress bar" showing, and Windows said it will take "some time" to convert to NTFS.
I was just wondering how long I should wait before getting nervvous again!
If I recall, the first time I did this a long, long time ago, it took at least an hour to convert...

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

wase4711

[Stringent]

Not that long to be honest. Heck of a lot shorter than reformatting it as NTFS!

[wase4711]

so, about an hour or 2 hours to convert a 120 gig?

I'm just afraid the pc is hung...


thanks!


wase4711

[Bads]

This not take two hours to convert a 120 gig hard drive

What is the brand of your HD ?

[tubebuoy]

You can't convert Win98 to NTFS. If you installed Win98 and it worked, and now you are installing XP, you need to format C:

You should just boot from XP, format C: and install XP.

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[wase4711]

Hi all;


Well, the nightmare is done..I have learned a couple things..

-dont wipe your hd, then defrag. without booting first!
-when you convert to ntfs from fat 32, you need to restart your pc to begin the process!

thanks to all who gave ideas; actually, i had some bad sectors, and fdisk does the job admirably!


wase4711