Computer Hope
Microsoft => Microsoft Windows => Windows Vista and 7 => Topic started by: prosportal on October 31, 2011, 12:19:50 PM
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Working on a Toshiba laptop that came stock with Vista basic. I'm trying to format the thing, but it's at 1% after an hour of formatting. What could be causing this?
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Disk on the fritz, probably. How are you doing the format? Have you checked the hdd data and power cables?
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Yeah, I was thinking there was a bad sector on the HDD so I was doing a full format, but it seemed to format okay using quick format so I guess everything is okay. :-\
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Not necessarily. A full format runs chkdsk /r before formatting. From what you've said, I think you should run chkdsk /r before going any further.
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I would agree, a quick format won’t tell you if the HDD has any bad sectors. I would recommend using a disk verifying utility like Spinrite (www.grc.com). It runs around $50.00 but it does a great job identify and fixing bad sectors. The utility takes about a day depending on the size of the hhd to run and repair but once done, you should be able to get the whole disk back. Then you can run a full format and it should be ready for reuse.
Ken
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I would agree, a quick format won’t tell you if the HDD has any bad sectors. I would recommend using a disk verifying utility like Spinrite (www.grc.com). It runs around $50.00 but it does a great job identify and fixing bad sectors. The utility takes about a day depending on the size of the hhd to run and repair but once done, you should be able to get the whole disk back. Then you can run a full format and it should be ready for reuse.
Ken
www.kmbl.us
Ken. I respectfully disagree with you. At one time SpinRite was a great too. Now for under $100 you can make a better investment buying a another HDD to verify the problem is in the drive and not the motherboard or anything other that the HDD. A good refurbished HDD will do.
a aberration in drive geometry. Tine preferred method of hardware diagnostic is by substitution. Not paid software diagnostics.The free stuff from the drive makers are good enough.