Formatting Hard Drive in XP

[NewbieCat]

Hello, How exactly do I format my Hard Drive with Win XP installed. It's running slow and scan disk reports 60% of my sectors are unreadable.
I want to use it as a secondary drive, because I purchased a new drive, but would like to format the old one prior to installation of the new drive....Hope that all made sense.

 

[RichPLS]

if 60% of sectors are unreadable, your drive is dying.

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[NewbieCat]

That's strange, This is an extra computer that is hardly ever used. I was using it to convert VHS to avi files. I just installed that software and converted a couple of tapes. . That wouldn't have anything to do with it, would it? I'm sure it doesn't. So there is no fixing it then?
I wonder if Western Digital will cover this under warranty?
Thank You, for the quick response

 

[RichPLS]

you can reformat and see if it will recover sectors, im sure it will, but with 60% gone, even if 50% of those are recovered, you still left with 30% bad sectors.
Maybe someone else can add their opinion.

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And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[NewbieCat]

Would the best way to format in XP, be to go into "My Computer" right click and select "Format"
Thank You for your help.

 

[RichPLS]

As long as its not C drive, thats fine.

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And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[NewbieCat]

It is my C: Drive, How else can I Format it?

 

[RichPLS]

Set BIOS to boot of cd drive, then put in XP cd, and install, you will get an option to install on which partition, select drive, delete it and reformat it.

<font color=red><pre>\\//__________________________________
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[RichPLS]

youll want to back up data first.

<font color=red><pre>\\//__________________________________
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[Ned_Flanders]

try a low level format. Sometimes these sort out bad sectors. Go on the WD site and find the tool that lets you do LLFormats.


Takes a few hours btw, so set it going and go to bed or something

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[jon_west_uk]

If i were you i would install xp on your new drive then plug in your second drive to your pc. Copy the files you want to the new drive and then do a full format on the old, if that makes sense. That'll save you you the hassle of backing everything up onto disc etc.

Not sure it is worth saving your drive though. Sounds like it is going to die soon anyway. Do you regularly defreag your drives?

Kazaa managed to spectacularly kill my brothers HD as he never defragged. He ended up with 1 file split into 700 pieces over the drive!

Someone please unwire me...the gadgets are taking over!