Harddrive Won't Format

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jason Lowell
  • Start date Start date
J

Jason Lowell

My PC came with Windows XP installed on a 120gb harddrive
with the FAT32 file system. So I decided to reformat
(full) to change the file system to NTFS. Everything
looked like it was going fine untill the format was 100%
complete. This message popped up:

Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be
damaged. Make sure the drive is switched on and properly
connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk,
make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated.
Consult your computer or SCSI adapter documentation for
more information.

Help!
 
If you format the drive this will erase everything on it, and you cannot
format it from Windows. You have to boot up with your XP CD-ROM, format, and
then reinstall. If you just want to change over to NTFS without losing any
data you should use the convert command. However since you already tried to
format it you may already have lost data. If so you'll have to boot with
your CD and reinstall Windows.

To convert to NTFS open a command prompt and type:

CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS
 
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