how many allocation units?

[mcool61]

I'm trying to format a 4 gig drive & it has been trying to recover allocation units for 3 days now. It is up to 1,014,000. I don't even know if it is succeeding. I don't mind waiting as long as it works.
How many allocation units does a 4 gig drive have? Is it junk?
The drive is a seagate medalist 3221.

[leprechaun_40]

I don't know how many units that drive would have, but, if it's trying to recover that many, you got trouble, period. Sounds like a drive headed for the boneyard to me. You might try Seagates site and see if they have a diagnostic utility however.

[rmanet]

that's an older drive and if you've got an older mobo be sure that your HDD is jumpered and cabled correctly, and your BIOS is detecting the drive properly too

but I'd be real careful if the above solves the problem - if it does start working I'd run scandisk right away

[Swordfish]

Have you tried Seatools from Seagate?

Its a good diagnostic tool, there is an online version also.

3 days man you have some patience there. Just download it and run it. For more info check the following link.

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

[mcool61]

I think it's junk. It had approx. 1,000,060 allocation units. It still has mostly bad sectors. I've got a different drive in it now & all is well.
I'll try the link for diagnostics. thanx
mc

[leprechaun_40]

Sorry to hear it's dead. I had a 4 gb drive in my machine, it BSOD'd one night, said it couldn't write to device drive c: and then the bios wouldn't even find the drive without a lot of coaxing. Once it did though, I couldn't access it or even format it, it was history along with all that's on it. Gladly, I keep a tape backup, most data files on another drive and had alot of stuff on CD as well:D