Format Woes;recovering allocation units

[LeftCoast]

Hi All,

I've repartitioned a used HD (WD Caviar 205AA, one year old) that was working fine, but I want to do a fresh install of Win 98se on it. I blasted the partitions, repartitioned,and am attempting to format.

The problem is that during the format (format c:/s), the screen prompts that it is trying to recover an allocation unit (95,698), and takes 10 minutes or so until it moves on to 95,699, 10 minutes til 95,700, etc. I'm 38, and would like to have this sucker complete the format in my lifetime!

Also, when you repartition and format, is the disk wiped, or are the file letters just changed, with info recoverable? I ask because on a new HDD I just set up with win98se, I installed a cheap mouse that sucked, and the system hung up badly when I tried to uninstall the mouse driver, giving me some kind of "uninstall wizard is busy" error message. I kept getting the message, and as the OS had been set-up for 30 minutes, I said screw it, and repartitioned, reformatted and installed Win98se again. Then, I got the damn uninstall wizard is busy message again!

Suggestions or info to shed some light would be appreciated.

-LC

[dunbar]

1] a Maxtor did the same thing to me, I ran the MaxBlast software utility and recertified the drive. In some forums, deep in the threads, I have heard that this is not uncommon for a drive to lose minor amounts and still be called good drives. Maybe WD has changed, but my older WDAC11200 (1.2 gig) was so totally fouled up that WDs software told me to send it in for warranty service..... the drive was 2.8 years old, and WD sent me a refurbed 1.2 gig drive with no hassles at all.

2] factory utilities will usually format a drive much better than fdisk, IMO.

3] That Maxtor drive I mentioned in 1]? it was still recovering allocation units after >9 hours of formatting, the MaxBlast utility needed <2 hours to recertify the drive.

4] repartitioning can be undone, as the data is essentially data written in the MBR.

5] Always power down if Microsoft says you need to reboot; I learned this the hard way.

6] make certain of the BIOS settings for boot sequence..... the BIOS can skip the floppy, skip the CDROM and instead choose the Hard disk, unless you arrange the sequence yourself. Sound like maybe your boot sequence is hard disk first...?