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Main => Everything Else => Topic started by: Minwah on September 03, 2004, 09:49:00 am

Title: HD won't format NTFS
Post by: Minwah on September 03, 2004, 09:49:00 am

I'm trying to format & install XP on a machine at work...but for some reason it won't format in NTFS (forget the exact message but gets to 100% done then says the disk may have errors).  It seems to format OK in FAT32 tho...

Does anyone know what may cause this error (& how to fix)?

Does it matter if I use FAT32 (I have always gone with NTFS for XP before)?

Any advice would be great :)

Title: Re:HD won't format NTFS
Post by: JackTucky on September 03, 2004, 10:09:43 am

I had the most wacked problems once reformatting my MAME machine.  Sometimes it would finish the format, then die on install, other times the format would get to 100% then fail.

 Turned out it was a bad IDE cable.  I haven't bought and IDE cable in years.  Staples had some funky ones for like $20 bucks.  

I had to search around for a nice cheap one that would break again in a couple years.

Art

Title: Re:HD won't format NTFS
Post by: fredster on September 03, 2004, 10:49:23 am

I had trouble with a western digital HDD like that.  The firmware wouldn't support it or something.  I switched to a Maxtor and it was fine.

I went to WD's site, even zeroed the drive out, still the same crap.

Title: Re:HD won't format NTFS
Post by: Mameotron on September 04, 2004, 01:42:50 am

Hmm, I would suspect the drive, cabling, controller.  I recently installed XP Pro and formatted with NTFS on about 30 computers at work.  I only had 2 failures, one was a controller fault and one was the drive (western digital).  All the successful formats were Maxtor drives.

I used to think all drives were the same, but recently I'm beginning to question the quality of the smaller western digital drives.

Title: Re:HD won't format NTFS
Post by: Harry Potter on September 04, 2004, 02:32:38 pm

When in XP setup, try Quick Format in NTFS. I had a similar problem and that seemed to fix it. If it doesn't work, your system probably doesn't support large(r) drives or is just stuffed.

Hope that helps

Title: Re:HD won't format NTFS
Post by: Zakk on September 04, 2004, 03:41:03 pm

If this helps: my main drive for XP is formatted FAT32 (I haven't had to wipe the system since I installed XP, and I have been too lazy to do the command line conversion to NTFS).

 I just installed a secondary 160 gig drive and did the whole thing from inside windows, and it worked fine.  However, perhaps you can format it FAT32 and then convert?  The command line for conversion is

convert [volume] /fs:ntfs [/v] [/cvtarea:FileName] [/nosecurity] [/x]

Hope this helps too!