Hard drive format stuck at 1%

Hi there. My computer has been need of a reformat for quite some time now, so I got around to it today. However, after starting the process, I've found that it is stuck at 1%. It's been like this for about an hour now. I'm not sure what to do. As a side note that might be related, Windows update would not work starting a few months ago. When I shut down to update it would get stuck and give up. Perhaps there is something wrong with my hard drive?

I'm running Windows XP Professional on a Dell XPS laptop with 2.0GHz, 1GB ram, and 100GB HD.

I appreciate any help anyone can give me.

 

Are you trying to format your drive from within windows (while XP is Running) or from a boot disk for that purpose? I ask because you cannot format the C drive while its active.

 

I booted from CD and started installing on the correct partition. It then asked to format or not and I said do full format. The screens are blue with white text.

Whoa, it just jumped to 3% as I was typing this. Perhaps it was so jacked up I just had to wait a long time. Still, what would cause it to take this long?

 

It almost sounds like your telling it to format a partition thats not empty, so it has to delete the partition first before it can format it. I usually format the entire C drive prior to reinstalling (that is I never split my C drive into more than one partition, C,D E etc.) so I use the disk that came with the drive and then if I choose to let the XP install format as well, I choose the quick format method and its done in less than a minute even on a large 500gig drive.

So for example my C drive is a 250gig maxtor IDE, and I boot to the maxtor install disk and use it to format the entire drive as one partition, then when I go to install XP on it, I tell it to quick format the same disk and boom its really quick.

 

Windows XP's "full format" takes ages, especially on large hard disks.

 

Check out Adrynalyne's tip at http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=138098 relating to mkdiskraw command.

This will wipe your disk, and then re-format from an OS disk.

I haven't tried it, so use it at your own risk.

Bazza

 

Thanks Baz, but it appears that that is a boot-only method also. :cry I know I can use the Windows disk management console, or even use a utility from one of the driver makers, but the DM console takes forever to do a full format, and I don't think it really zeroes the drive like a low level wipe would do; and the utils from the HD makers are usually only useful with their particular brand (ie; I can't use Seatools on a Hitachi or WD drive), and they tend to be fairly large downloads (Seatools for Windows is over 90mb, or is it the WD tool? :confused One of 'em is over 90mb and the other is over 120mb IIRC). Maybe I can run the mkdiskraw from the command prompt inside Windows if I run it on a slave/external drive?

Thanks!

 

dlb, that was the point I was trying to make. And it is what I thought would be of benefit to you. Bazza

===