Problems Partitioning/Formatting new HDD

[Tetsuo316]

Hi, I would be much indebted to anyone who can help me solve this problem.

I just purchased a Samsung 120GB HDD and have been unable to partition it or format it fully. I first tried FDISK to do the partitions, but it recognized the drive as 49GB. That didn't seem right so I rebooted and checked the BIOS. It had it correctly recognized as 120GB, so I thought, "Hey, maybe I'll just partition 5GB of it for Win98 and then use my Windows XP Disc to complete the other partitions/formats." So, I used FDISK to partition 5GB and that worked. However, when I went to format the disk, it froze at 58%.

Hmmm.

So, I went back into FDISK, cleared all the partitions, and tried the Windows 2000 disc. It actually recognized the full 120Gb of by drive, so I figure the limitation thing is on FDISK, not my drive. So, through the Windows 2000 setup I was able to partition to my heart's delight. I set up a 5GB partition for Windows 2000 and went to format and lo and behold it froze at 58%.

Hmmm.

I checked out the Samsung utilities page and found the SHDIAG and Disk Manager utilities. I thought, "Hey, the formats are freezing in the same place, maybe my drive is messed up. I'll try the diagnostic tool (SHDIAG) first." Well, nothing came of that. For the full examination, it reached 2% completion and then declared that there were no errors. I don't know if that is common for the utility.

So, then I decided to try the Disk Manager utility for my partitioning needs, but that wouldn't even load for me. I read through the FAQs on the Samsung site to no avail.

If anyone has any idea on what is causing my formats to hang, I would be forever grateful. Thanks.

 

[Dahak]

Try running the diagnostic with there HUTIL
that is located Here . Ive uses the other diagnotic and it always missed some error.

 

[Tetsuo316]

I'm going to give that HUTIL a shot momentarily. Thanks for the idea, Dahak.

What I also just discovered is that there is something wrong with the drive. It will progress past the 58% mark when formatting it just takes foreverrrr. It has to attempt to recover an allocation unit. So, I guess that means there's a bad sector. Since I just bought this drive, do you think I should send it in to Samsung/Newegg for a replacement?

That is of course if the HUTIL that was suggested doesn't fix the problem.

 

[themess]

Check your mobo supplier's web site for BIOS update revision history. There is a good chance that your BIOS doesn't handle a drive as large as 120 gig. A BIOS update might handle it. Some drives also have a jumper that effectively turns the drive into a smaller one that can be utililzed by systems with a BIOS limitation. Finally, your operating system might have a limitation. Check out the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

 

[jsalpha2]

I had a similar problem with my 80 gig harddrive. After running Fdisk it would take forever to format and come out with the wrong size. I set the jumper to slave and booted to windows and then went to my computer, clicked on the new drive, right clicked on it and clicked format, just like a floppy. It worked. I was about to set it to 3 partitions,
because I read somewhere that FAT32 would not work on partitions larger than 32gig.
Good Luck

 

[redbeard1]

Win98 fdisk has a problem reporting the size of drives larger than 64 gig. After 64 gig, it wraps around. So an 80 gig drive would show something under 16 gig in fdisk. Microsoft has an update for it, which when you download and install it, replaces the 98 fdisk with the version from winME. Even the newer one has a limitation of 127 gig though.

Win2k and XP will only let you create fat32 partitions 32 gig or less. Fat32 can be used on any sized drives, you just have to use a third party partitioning utility to create it on the new big drives.