Can't make Partitions

[emerald876]

I was having problems with Windows 7, so I decided to wipe my hard drive completely, and then reinstall. As I was reinstalling, the "Copying Windows Files" stage stayed at 0%. I thought nothing of it. I come back in like 10 minutes, and see that a popup said the following.

"Windows could not format a partition on disk 0. The error occurred while preparing the partition selected for installation."

I also tried installing Ubuntu 10.10, and when it got to the point where it makes the partitions, it just froze. If anyone can give some hints on why this might be happening, and how I can fix it, I'd be truly grateful.

 

[chesteracorgi]

On the assumption that you did not ruin the low level formatting, in which case you will have to run fdisk again, then it may be a problem with the hardware and your physical medium may be corrupt.

 

[extremepcs]

Sounds like your drive is about to die. If you have access to another working computer, you might want to download something like the Ultimate Boot CD and boot the dead computer from it. It has a lot of utilities like HD Tune that can test the drive. Others can do a low-level format on it to completely remove any corrupt files/partitions.

 

[emerald876]

That sucks if it's about to die, I just bought this one 6 months ago. My motherboard has been sluggish on boot, so maybe the SATA controller is having issues? Also, what's low level formatting?

 

[emerald876]

I ran ESTOOL on my drive, and when the test was over, it came up with "Error AJ36: Bad Sector!" after the MULTIPLE READ TEST.

It also came up with "Unknown error" when it completed the RAM VERIFY TEST.

Anyone know what all this means?

EDIT: I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 through a LiveCD, and I used the Disk Utility, and it says that there are no bad sectors. I'm beyond confused right now.

 

[extremepcs]

It's possible that the sata controller has issues. Does the board have more than one controller, like an Intel and a Marvell or something else? If so, try the other one. Also if it is set to raid mode, set it to AHCI or IDE mode. Also check for bios updates for your board.

 

[chesteracorgi]

It is good that your rig is under warranty, but sad that you may lose all of your data. You could try out your HDD on another rig and see if it is the controller or the HDD. The error messages indicate a HDD problem, and your only recourse may be to have it replaced under warranty.

 

[emerald876]

I was able to install Windows after trying one more time, and it took much longer than expected. It's running fine now, but I'm still wondering why it would do this, I'll check out whether or not it's the SATA controller, since Ubuntu said that my drive was healthy and had no bad sectors.

 

[chesteracorgi]

I recommend that you do an analysis with crystaldisk or other analysis apps to do further investigation of the source of the problem.

 

[RetiredChief]

How about going to the HDD manufs website and download their HDD utility to check the HDD.
If drive passes. Note: the one program indicated bad sectors, and if that is the case then that is why windows took longer to install.

For windows installation, select custom install and remove all HDD partitions, then repartition if you want a 2nd data partition on the drive.

 

[emerald876]

My windows seems to be running fine now, not declaring it fixed though.

I reseated the RAM and ran the Seagate Diagnostic (SEATools), since SAMSUNG sold their hard drive line to Seagate, the hard drive was fine, no errors, and unplugged it and replugged it, and windows is running as fast as my build did on day one.

Any suggestions as to why this happened?