Formating slowly

[Redmo0n]

Hey

I am formating a hard drive from my old computer that i first bought, its a 40gig samsung NTFS drive.

Anyway it looks like it gets stuck at about 4/5 way through but i left it over night and there was no change (another hard drive was fine and formated in 1hour or so) but before i went to school i gave it another go.

Anyway when i came back from school it looked as if its moved about 1cm more than before (measuring it with the letters underneath and its currently at the "e" in cancel when before it was at the "n")

Just wondering why its taking over 6 hours to format the drive. Its pretty old and i am guessing it is bad, but shouldn't it just get stuck and not move at all instead of moving at 0.00000001mph?

 

[Redmo0n]

Just and update, it's now just past the "L" in cancel, WOOO!

 

[KSoD]

Kill Disk

GParted

Boot and Nuke

Acronis Disk Director

PowerMax


I am sure any one of these will help you get formatted faster.

 

[Redmo0n]

Most of them require cds or floppy and some look like they nuke the entire system.

I just need something that erases a single hard drive. Oh and i canceled the format so there better be something cause i not waiting another 24 hours.




Edit: Using kill disk now and seems to be going fine

 

[superdave1984]

I would guess you have bad sectors on that drive. Killdisk will wipe it anyway, but you may not be able to install an OS on there. If it has bad sectors the windows setup won't format and won't install. If you are just going to use it as a data drive, you may be OK. But you really need to fun some diagnostics on the drive before saving anything on it.

 

[Redmo0n]

Ok well everything went fine and it wiped and then formated instantly.

Everything was great and i put a few files on there and everything was running smooth, i was telling my friend how much i <3 computers when they work and basically was happy and was going to go to bed.

Then i thought what the ****! Why don't i fix up my cables and clean some dust out and make it all pretty. Well after shutting it down turning it back on. Well.

First it gets to the loading screen of Windows Vista and just sits there, which i though it could be doing something with the new drive so i left it for 5 minutes and still nothing. So i played around with settings to see if something was wrong but when i checked bios it now only showed my 250gig and a 80gig not 250 80 and 40.

So i reset the bios and cmos and still nothing.

Then i tried to take one of the drives out thinking the 40 gig was screwed, and it worked (can't tell if i was happy or not). Then i shut down to see if it would work now, but when i shut down the Windows is shutting down would appear and the monitor and leds would go off, but the power and fans stayed on in the computer. WTF!

So after some random poop it stopped doing that and i was still wtfing over why it wasn't working, so i tried using it (40gig) and my windows/other (250gig) and taking out the 80. Now to my surprise it worked! (Kinda happy) but it also made it more confusing.

Then i tried both again and it can't get passed the windows loading screen. So then i tried straightening the HDD cabble and using different power plugs for each drive. Still no luck.

Why the frick can't it boot with both the 80 and the 40. They are both IDE and my 250 is sata.

So.

1. Won't boot together, also only shows the 80 (and 250) when booting together in bios.

2. 80 (and 250) will boot on there own.

3. 40 (and 250) will boot on there own.


I also ran HDtune on them and they looked fine.

BAHHH!




EDIT: Oh and btfw its now 1:00am and i have school in 7 hours. > Time for a ragesleep

Bump~

I am off school because i slept in >:X

~bump

Tripple post but i really need help!



Edit: Ok i just read some stuff about IDE drives from google and i was looking at master drives and slaves. From what i can understand, the connector with 3 plugs (one for motherboard and 2 for hard drives) makes 1 drive the slave and the other a master to boot from?

I pretty sure i haven't read this correctly but if i am right then how can i set both IDE's to be slaves, or is there another solution and i am just being retarded.


Also can a mod change the title to "Hard drive won't work together" or something like that.

thx

Quadruple post

Issue was resolved, shows what a bit of reading can do.

Thread closed!

 

[KSoD]

I have said this before. But i am not sure if you read it. The IDE connectors do have a Master and Slave connection. Many dont belive me. But i know it to be true.

Mobo------------------Conn 1-------Conn 2

Now that is how the cable looks. The long section should alwyas be coming off from the mobo. After that Conn 1 is considered the Master connection. Conn 2 is the Slave. This is how your PC will recognize the drives after they are connected if you use Cabe Select as you method of identifying the drives.

Sorry i didnt post this earlier...Kinda missed out on the topic...

 

[Redmo0n]

No problem

I didn't know much about drives but i seem to have learned a lot in 20min xD

My problem is that i have 1 sata drive which is my main/boot drive and 2 IDE drives which i wanted as slaves. Seeing at my board has 1 IDE connection i can't have 2 slaves?

Is there a way to stop the master from trying to boot with the slave plugged in at the same time? I think that whats causing it to not boot when i have both the 40 and 80 in at the same time.

 

[KSoD]

When using a mix of drives of SATA and IDE you still need to have the IDE drives set as master slave. Just make sure that the BIOS is set to use the SATA before the IDE drives.

That shoudl solve your issue. Set the jumpers to cable select and make sure the boot order is set to SATA before IDE.

 

[Redmo0n]

Nvm now

I am going to use the 40 gig for my sisters pc when in 205820869 million years she finally buy it.

thx anyway mak :happy: