Drive will not format with win98 boot disc, but with XP boot disk?

Bizkitkid2001 · April 20th, 2003, 08:44 PM

I went to go format my 8gig hard drive, but during the middle of the format it stopped formating. It sat there for a good 20 minutes doing nothing before I restarted it agin. I rant he format one more time, but sitll stopped at about 50%. So I had to get out my winxp disc and format it with that. Could my hard drive be going out?

Scott Tiger · April 20th, 2003, 08:50 PM

Possibly. I'd download the drive manufacturer's test ulitities and give that drive a once over before I bothered installing an OS on it again. But that's just me. That drive may well last for another 10 years. You never know..

ArcticFox · April 20th, 2003, 09:49 PM

If your computer supports it, why not just buy a bigger drive? 20gb are cheap... Actually, their not that cheaper from a 60-80gb, if you look at their price-capacity ratio. It makes you wonder: is it a conspiracy? That your new 60gb is really a 200gb, just with a barrier?

Hm.... Think on that for a while.

Xtreeme · April 21st, 2003, 05:51 AM

ArcticFox
They arent like cpu's in that way at all. with HDD's the higher density ='s higher data storage. Higher density per platter ='s faster and cooler and quieter. By useing all those platters (200gig) and making it run cool enuff for normal operation-and noise lv. Plus data integrety it cost more $. Which is why it costs more to buy. (avg. 80gig is two platters) No sense in just limiting the set size while the platters are larger. Reason smaller gig drives are less value per gig is cause of manufacturing costs. THink about it. Wether 10-200gig its got the motor-heads and heavy caseing plus circuitry and assembly line costs. Making it larger capacity will be cheaper per gig. They are just passing the saving on to you somewhat. Be happy-it doesnt happen often. Now if the mem market could just be like that-its the shakiest market of all the pc industry.

Xtreeme · April 21st, 2003, 05:55 AM

Bizkitkid2001

Ive noticed that the XP format program and fdisk for that matter. Seems more powerfull than win9x ones. It supports more partitions than old fdisk-can fix linux partitions back to fat32/16 and ntfs. While 98 couldnt. the list goes on. Could have been that it dropped a sector (even NEW drives have some bad sectors) and the XP format marked it and wrote around it. Seeing how most all HDD's have spare sectors they can pull when needed you wont see a loss in mb. Low level format does this. Maybe its a mixed format of sorts. Dont know-but Ive seen weird stuff like that too. Involving partitions and such.

Bizkitkid2001 · April 21st, 2003, 05:39 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ArcticFox
If your computer supports it, why not just buy a bigger drive? 20gb are cheap... Actually, their not that cheaper from a 60-80gb, if you look at their price-capacity ratio. It makes you wonder: is it a conspiracy? That your new 60gb is really a 200gb, just with a barrier?

Hm.... Think on that for a while.

I don't need a bigger hard drive. Infact my old 1.5gig I had in here ws big enough, it was just to slow(Like 2800rpm or something?) So I stuck in this 8gig becasue it is 5400rpm. Its only going in my game server. And its running win98 so it doesn't need a big hard drive.

nukes · April 21st, 2003, 06:52 PM

If the XP format whizzed through it, did you do a quick format? If so it may just have skipped the damaged part of the disk. (Assuming it is damaged which is possible if its stopping part way through format)
I also say download the drive maker's tools and run a scan on it. Also check its SMART status (don't know of any windows/dos tools to do that though)

ArcticFox · April 25th, 2003, 03:33 AM

I hope your not going to do anything with that drive if it's in a game server! I shouldn't be talking, as I use a laptop with a 4200 rpm 10gb drive and 128mb RAM as a dedicated Counter-Strike server with some 10-20 bot's on and 5 people playing; somehow our ping never goes above 15. Ever. I see 2 ping, yes TWO ping sometimes when playing on this 700PIII Gateway, my friends totally flip out when they come to parties and see my "server".

Anyways about your system - I doubt that it would have monitoring hardware installed in it, because of it's age. And nukes is right: quick reformats are lame and should be avoided unless your in a hurry to hide the evidence until you can fully ditch it. Doing this just wipes the TOC in the drive making it look like it's empty, so it writes over everything. It's quick, sure, but it won't zone off bad sectors and stuff that can accumulate over time.