How to Format HD NTSF?

  • Thread starter Thread starter MarkW
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M

MarkW

True Image, along with some other imaging software, does not format or
perform a disc check before restoring the image. This raises a question...
if a bad sector has caused the OS to become unstable and you tried to fix by
restoring the backup image, would the image just be placed back on that bad
sector again? Thoughts?

A workaround is to perform a format before restoring the image. I know this
can be accomplished using the Windows XP CD and performing all the steps up
to the actual Windows install. Is there an easier way? Is it possible to
add certain files to the XP generated MS-DOS startup disk so that you can
boot off the floppy and format the hard drive NTSF via DOS?

Are there other techniques or utilities to format the hard drive?
 
If the partition is currently NTFS, booting from a DOS boot disk would be
useless as it couldn't see the partition in order to perform any functions:
though you could use FDISK to delete the partition and Format to format it
assuming both were on the floppy.

That said, what you are trying to do, won't accomplish what you want. Even
if you format the partition ahead of time, restoring an image will replace
whatever is on the partition including any formatting information with that
of the image.

That said, if you have an issue of bad sectors on the hard drive and you are
already having problems as a result, my guess is, your drive is in the first
stages of failure. When it will fail completely is conjecture. My
experience which is by no means universal, once you start getting reports of
bad sectors, the drive is going to fail and soon; I had 3 die in one year,
two on one system and one on another and all were preceded by bad sectors
and various resulting issues. Given the low cost of new hard drives today
and the value of your data, even if you are well backed up, I'd consider
replacing that drive as soon as possible.
 
All very good points... thank you!

It sounds like getting a new hard drive ASAP is the best course of action,
but to close this thought out I have question. Not exactly understanding
all the details of what is occurring as the hard drive is trying to write,
is there something built into the drive itself that recognizes that it is
unable to write to a sector, therefore it adjust by moving to the next
sector to continue writing?
 
Uh, I have to squirm on this. It may be able to do so initially but at some
point, the fox will outrun the rabbit and you will not only start getting
"cannot write to disk" errors but also "cannot read" errors as well.

If you have any doubts about your drive, the manufacturer has a tools disk
that you can download from the drive manufacturer's website. Running its
diagnostics can usually tell if a drive is about to fail though, if you are
getting bad sector errors, I'd be really surprised if it didn't find an
issue.
 
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