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[Terbs]

Hi all. especially comp experts

I am trying to format a HDD (Sata)....it gets as far as 96% then stops.....is it fubared or is there a way of testing.
My personal thought was attaching it as a slave in another computer and running chkdsk on D;........would that work ?? 
I can't remember whether this is a new disk or has been formatted previously   My memory is not what it used to be excuse to comp related pun

[cem_devecioglu]

dont use it as system disk (c drive)..

attach to a working pc as secondary disk .. either use the windows disk management to (from my computer> right click >manage> disk management) or some free disk checking tools.. and find the exact location (sectors) , calculate the size and partition the disk accordingly .. a partition of %94-95 will be safe as I understand from your post..

[aaronjb]

Is the format you're doing a 'full' format (takes a long while, writes over every sector of the disk) or just a regular format (just writes a FAT to the start of the disk)?

If it's the latter then either the disk is well and truly hosed or it's a controller/interface/driver issue.

If it's a full format then it's probably a bad sector somewhere along the disk in which case, dump it (if it's run out of sectors to reallocate and can't even format, it's just going to die and take whatever you put on there with it!).

If you really want to find out what's wrong with it; http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

[mathewst]

Terbert your approach should work.

[aaronjb]

Terbert your approach should work.
 

It's been a while since I ran Windows, granted.. but surely a 'chkdsk' on a partially formatted drive (if it's even given a drive letter) is just going to tell you that ... it's a partially formatted drive?

[Terbs]

Thanks for responses guys.....on the case now.

[Kevin Wood]

Terbert your approach should work.
 

It's been a while since I ran Windows, granted.. but surely a 'chkdsk' on a partially formatted drive (if it's even given a drive letter) is just going to tell you that ... it's a partially formatted drive?

You are right. Chkdsk looks for logical problems with the filesystem. We know the file system has had it because it couldn't successfully format it.

I would look for a tool that can show the SMART status of the drive, although I'm not familiar with anything on windows that does that (I'd boot from a Linux live cd to diagnose). I suspect it will have remapped all the bad blocks it can internally, and has started to become unreliable in a big way. If that's the case it's not worth risking your data on it.

Kevin

[TheBoy]

I'd recommend a tool called Victoria (I think), its a fantastic, DOS based, HDD checker. If that scans OK, do a full surface test with Ranish partition manager.

The MS tools are kinda OK, but don't always sort everything.

[Mr Skrunts]

Format it to 90% as a slave drive the try and format the last 10% as another partition, it may well show up a bad sector faster that way.

If it shows a single bad sector the personaly I would not store data on it, but would be happy to use it as the internet cache and tempory files drive etc.

[TheBoy]

Format it to 90% as a slave drive the try and format the last 10% as another partition, it may well show up a bad sector faster that way.

If it shows a single bad sector the personaly I would not store data on it, but would be happy to use it as the internet cache and tempory files drive etc.

If any intelligent drive (ie, IDE, PATA, SATA, SCSI, SAS etc) shows a bad sector, its buggered. Toast. Has-been. Shagged. Knackered.

Intelligent drives remap bad sectors to some 'secret' areas on the disk automatically (and will report via SMART if its above a threshold - this is one of the parameters used in prefailure warnings to replace disks, if your system has that functionality).  So if the OS sees a bad sector, thats a sure sign the disk has run out of secret areas to remap to, which is a sure sign that something bad has happened (usually a head crash causing debris in the drive).

[TheBoy]

And given the ridulously low price of drives, and the fact newer ones will perform better, if you do have a drive that is showing bad sectors, why mess around with it

[Terbs]

And given the ridulously low price of drives, and the fact newer ones will perform better, if you do have a drive that is showing bad sectors, why mess around with it

This I agree with, however before chucking it, it was worth the question......and really informative responses. Whilst the drive is/may be knackered, my knowledge has increased immensly

[TheBoy]

Reminds me, I seem to be collecting a few 1Tb disks here... ...its lke they're breeding


Still, I guess its spares for when OOF munches its disks...

[aaronjb]

Reminds me, I seem to be collecting a few 1Tb disks here... ...its lke they're breeding


Still, I guess its spares for when OOF munches its disks...

I have a whole spare NAS now after I got fed up with the fans in my homebrew unRAID box and bought a Qnap - 8x2TB disks in that one. That'll last at least a month 

[TheBoy]

Reminds me, I seem to be collecting a few 1Tb disks here... ...its lke they're breeding


Still, I guess its spares for when OOF munches its disks...

I have a whole spare NAS now after I got fed up with the fans in my homebrew unRAID box and bought a Qnap - 8x2TB disks in that one. That'll last at least a month 

I'm trying to reduce my leccy bill, so not after a NAS - though it would be a good use of those spare disks


I did look into one of the toy ReadyNAS's, but performance wasn't up to it.  Start going to the big boys to get the performance - NetApps et el - and it seems power usage rockets. As does price