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General discussion

External Hard Drive Formatting Question

Mar 30, 2006 9:03AM PST

I just got an external hard drive (250GB Maxtor) and am in the process of formatting it, it has been formatting for over an hour and is only at 1%.

I was just wondering if this is normal or if there is something wrong, and if there is something wrong how did I go about fixing it?

System Specs
1.4 Ghz Centrino
512 MB ram
USB 2.0
Win XP Home

And help would be appriciated and thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

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(NT) (NT) Next time, use the quick format.
Mar 30, 2006 9:19AM PST
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Sounds like a problem to me...
Mar 30, 2006 12:11PM PST

What Windows Service Pack are you running ?

Exactly how are you formatting it....using XP admin tools ? Should have gone a lot further in an hour.

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Reply to: Sounds like a problem to me...
Mar 30, 2006 10:20PM PST

Im useing SP2.


Yes, Im useing the XP admin tools is how im formatting it.

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Think my next call would be to the drive MFG
Mar 31, 2006 12:14PM PST

Keep us posted.

VAPCMD

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I am no expert, but....
Apr 10, 2006 10:25PM PDT

I own two external hard drives and as I recall neither required formatting before using. But I just use them for data storage and not an OS, if that makes a difference.

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I can explain that.
Apr 10, 2006 11:10PM PDT

If you pick up a name brand ready to us product, it's ready to use. If you do like me and pick up the case and drive, you have to partition and format.

Bob

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I had the same problem
Apr 17, 2006 8:28PM PDT

And it was caused to a damage on the hard drive.

When formatting, after say 10min, the format would go in error, it'll say something like: "impossible to finish the operation".

I was patient and did it over and over again and eventually did finish, but there is always an error on the disk, this could be your case.