Is this a bad hard drive?

[Cadeau]

Hi, I'm trying to format a 2.1 gb hard drive with a AMD 450 . Anyways the progress on the format will not go past 35% . The progress speed seems to dwindle around 24% mark. It then taked about 30 minutes to get to the 35% finished mark. But doesn't go any farther then that. Does this sound like a bad hard drive? I have lots of ventilation on the cpu heat sync. So I know the processor isn't overheating to freeze it up. Thanks for your support guy!(or gal)

 

[rockinmale]

It may seem that your drive may have some bad sectors on it. It could probably be due to a head crash. A head crash is when the head scraps across the platter. Considering that this is an old drive, the bearings could be worn and causing the head to crash.

Why its taking so long is because its trying to allocate all those bad sectors so it wont use them. All i can tell you is this drive is basically on the way out. If you wait for the entire drive to be fixed. It will just end up creating more bad sectors and so on down the road. I would recommend that you find another replacement hard drive.

 

[JohnWill]

It's almost certainly a bad drive. At 2.1gig, it's got to be a pretty old drive, I think it doesn't owe you anything, time for a replacement.

 

[winbob]

Cadeau,

What are the results of running Scan disk, or chkdsk??? Are you getting disk errors with them, bad sectors, lost chains,etc. Can they be repaired? Being as cheap as I am I would not necessarily throw in the towel on the drive.

Mean time between failures is usually rated at several hundred thousand hours by the manufacturer.

 

[Cadeau]

Winbob, I did a disc scan and the dirive showed no errors or bad sectors. Its got me stumped why it can't go past 35%. Any other suggestions ?

 

[Jedi_Master]

Howdy folks...

Cadeau...

I've seen drives do this, sometimes a Low Level Format helps...

To do a LLF, go to the hard drive's manufacture's website, and download the diagnostics...

 

[winbob]

When you are doing the Format is this from within Windows, from the "RUN" command line, or while booted from a simple DOS boot disk?

I would try the latter before I gave up.

Also, what drive letter is the disk???

 

[ranger007]

I also agree with the low level format, and I would use it if that works, but I don't think I would ever trust it with important information.

I have one that I use only to double check that the system is working.

Good luck

 

[cavtek]

cad, maxtors maxblast will write zeros to any harddrive. use the full option. if that doesnt work and your sure the machine will boot with a good hd, the drive is dead. give it a decent burial.