Problems formatting a hard drive in Vista

[Spuggy88]

I'm using Vista Home Premium on an Acer Aspire laptop, and recently I lost
access to half my hard drive. I rang my manufacturers support line, and they
told me how to create a new vloume using disk management. However, when i
double click it, it says it needs to be formatted. After waiting a long time
(twice!) for the volume to format, it reaches 100% completion and then an
error message apears saying 'Windows cannot complete the format'. This
happens when i try Quick Format too. Upon clicking OK, i get a further
message saying 'Check to see that the disk and drive are connected properly,
and make sure the disk is not read only'. The disk is certainly not read
only, so can anyone suggest where i go from here?
I can see the drive in MyComputer etc. but cannot open or explore it. In
Properties, it says the volume is 0 bytes big! And it should be 50GB.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Spug

 

[Patrician]

I'm using Vista Home Premium on an Acer Aspire laptop, and recently I lost
access to half my hard drive. I rang my manufacturers support line, and
they
told me how to create a new vloume using disk management. However, when i
double click it, it says it needs to be formatted. After waiting a long
time
(twice!) for the volume to format, it reaches 100% completion and then an
error message apears saying 'Windows cannot complete the format'. This
happens when i try Quick Format too. Upon clicking OK, i get a further
message saying 'Check to see that the disk and drive are connected
properly,
and make sure the disk is not read only'. The disk is certainly not read
only, so can anyone suggest where i go from here?
I can see the drive in MyComputer etc. but cannot open or explore it. In
Properties, it says the volume is 0 bytes big! And it should be 50GB.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Spug

I would guess that the hard drive is dying. If the laptop is in warranty
I'd advise contacting Acer again and getting it repaired. If not a new hard
drive would be a round £42. tp £50.00 for a 80Gb one (depending on whether
S-ATA or IDE), and get your data copied over to the new drive.

Trev

 

[Spuggy88]

I would guess that the hard drive is dying. If the laptop is in warranty
I'd advise contacting Acer again and getting it repaired. If not a new hard
drive would be a round £42. tp £50.00 for a 80Gb one (depending on whether
S-ATA or IDE), and get your data copied over to the new drive.

Trev

Thanks for the help Trev. I'll get in touch with Acer and see what they
recommend. However, I can't see how the drive can be dying! its less than 8
months old, and this is the first problem i've ever had with it. is there no
other way of going about fixing it?

 

[Spuggy88]

I have trouble reading your post. You did say "hard drive", but which
one? There is the OS C: drive, and there is the local D: drive. OR, you
actually mean CD/DVD E: drives ,since you mentioned someting about "read
only" ?

I mean the D: drive, NOT the DVD drive or the drive holding my operating
system. Sorry for confusion.
After talking to acer support, i managed to get the D: drive back, but it
needs to be formatted before i can use it. Again, the support guy told me it
can't be done in Windows, but i need to download fdisk or partition magic.
any suggestions on which one?

and also, what is the difference between IDE and SATA external drives?

Thanks

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The important difference between IDE and SATA external drives is not so much
the drives as the enclosures. IDE enclosures connect to the computer with
USB or firewire cables. SATA enclosures connect via a SATA cable to an
eSATA port or by USB or firewire cables (a variety of connectors on the back
of the enclosure). The connection speed of USB and firewire is far slower
than by eSATA. Further, you can boot with an eSATA connected drive just the
same as with any internal SATA drive.

If you have an eSATA port on your computer I strongly recommend a SATA
drive, SATA enclosure, and appropriate cable. The performance is far better
than with USB or fireware.

 

[andy]

I mean the D: drive, NOT the DVD drive or the drive holding my operating
system. Sorry for confusion.
After talking to acer support, i managed to get the D: drive back, but it
needs to be formatted before i can use it. Again, the support guy told me it
can't be done in Windows, but i need to download fdisk or partition magic.
any suggestions on which one?

Any disk partition that Disk Management can create, it should also be
able to format. You have some kind of hardware problem.