format trouble

[StaticVoid]

im trying to format a 40 gig drive that has win me on it. i used fdisk and deleted the partition, then i made a new partition. then i restarted and tryed to format the drive. it looks as if its formating but stays at 0%.

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Welcome to SysOpt.
Try going back to FDISK and choose option 4, "Display Partition Information" and see what you've got. You may have to first enter CMOS and disable virus protection for the master boot record before you can FDISK successfully.

[BipolarBill]

Go ahead and Zap the drive:

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe

Unzip that download and copy ZAP.COM to your floppy. Run ZAP 0 (zero) at the prompt.

[StaticVoid]

after i zap it then what should i do or expect?

[BipolarBill]

FDISK and format once more.

[kazuza]

Or, you could use gdisk...
If you have Ghost...

To completly remove all partitions on that drive
gdisk 1 /del /all

To make a single partition and format it without need to reboot
gdisk 1 /cre /pri /szxxxx /for /q
xxxxx is the maximum size in MB that the partition can hold...

Very fast and very usefull, use that myself and saves me a lot of time...

[paramufay]

it could be your HD has/had a hidden partition on it, in which case only a zero fill will allow you to fdisk and format.

[StaticVoid]

i zapped it and fdisk and tryed to format with no luck still stays at 0%. no luck with ghost. the drive is 80 gig not 40. when i check the Display Partition Information it says its 12680 mb it should be closer to 81000. i made the partion take all the space but it still show less

[x51out]

In your initial post, you stated:"...im trying to format a 40 gig drive that has win me on it...". But in you rlast post, you state:"...the drive is 80 gig not 40. when i check the Display Partition Information it says its 12680 mb it should be closer to 81000. i made the...". So is it a 40 gb drive, or a 80 gb drive with one 40gb partiton/WinME?

[StaticVoid]

the drive is 80 gig it had a 40 gig partition. i called maxtor and they are sending me another drive. thx for are the help.

[biglaker]

Staticvoid:
I had a similar problem with fdisk showing the wrong amount of hard drive space- however it was an 80 Gb WD drive rather than Maxtor.
In case your interested, here's the thread:
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthre...hreadid=122659

I used the WD utility to partition and format part of the drive and Win 2k to install the remainder. Still don't know why fdisk didn't work right- I've been using it for years and never had it display the wrong drive size. Biglaker

[kazuza]

Originally posted by paramufay
it could be your HD has/had a hidden partition on it, in which case only a zero fill will allow you to fdisk and format.

With gdisk you can delete,resize and MAKE hidden partitions...

If you have Ghost, run gdisk from a boot disk and type:

gdisk 1 /status

You'll get ALL the info about the drive and it's partitions, even hidden ones...

[omega31]

I had that happen before. I think the drive was jumpered wrong, so it wouldn't report any progress. After setting the jumper correctly, format worked.

[paramufay]

Originally posted by StaticVoid
i zapped it and fdisk and tryed to format with no luck still stays at 0%. no luck with ghost. the drive is 80 gig not 40. when i check the Display Partition Information it says its 12680 mb it should be closer to 81000. i made the partion take all the space but it still show less

what you wanna bet the new drive aint gonna work either

[StaticVoid]

if not i know where to come http://www.sysopt.com/forum best help forum on the net.