"Windows was unable to Format the partition"

[Guest]

I recently aquired a system that I'm working on for someone. When I use the
Dell Resource CD provided I goto Format the drive using NTFS Quick. It kicks
back a message saying "Windows was unable to Format the partition because
this disk may be damaged"

I have two brand new seagate drives in the system. Using the Seagate
utility I can format the drives etc. However I noticed when I format with
Seagate I go into copy files on the Windows setup. It FLYS through it, but
this errors out at the end. \

My Speculation is Bad MB, Bad Processor. Or possibly Bad Memory but I tried
memory swap with no luck. Ideas? What does XP look for when trying to
Format?

 

[Ground Cover]

Try a full format.

 

[JS]

You should have a tool to check the drive integrity on your Seagate
Utilities CD, did you run it?

JS

 

[Guest]

Drive integrity is fine, As I said above I can format the drive using the
Seagate utilities and it checks out fine.

Also to answer the other question above - I tried a full format it takes
over an hour to give the same results

 

[Kerry Brown]

I recently aquired a system that I'm working on for someone. When I
use the Dell Resource CD provided I goto Format the drive using NTFS
Quick. It kicks back a message saying "Windows was unable to Format
the partition because this disk may be damaged"

I have two brand new seagate drives in the system. Using the Seagate
utility I can format the drives etc. However I noticed when I format
with Seagate I go into copy files on the Windows setup. It FLYS
through it, but this errors out at the end. \

My Speculation is Bad MB, Bad Processor. Or possibly Bad Memory but
I tried memory swap with no luck. Ideas? What does XP look for
when trying to Format?

How large are the new drives? You may be at the 48 bit LBA barrier (137 GB)
and the Dell Resource CD is not recognising the drives properly.

 

[Guest]

I recently aquired a system that I'm working on for someone. When I use the
Dell Resource CD provided I goto Format the drive using NTFS Quick. It kicks
back a message saying "Windows was unable to Format the partition because
this disk may be damaged"

I have two brand new seagate drives in the system. Using the Seagate
utility I can format the drives etc. However I noticed when I format with
Seagate I go into copy files on the Windows setup. It FLYS through it, but
this errors out at the end. \

My Speculation is Bad MB, Bad Processor. Or possibly Bad Memory but I tried
memory swap with no luck. Ideas? What does XP look for when trying to
Format?

Kerry - Both drives are 120 Gig, but the strange part is, the drive that was
in there previously was 120 gig also. Dell tried also to say that the drives
weren't compatable. I found out later that the existing drive (the one that
came with the system) is still good, however Windows XP will not allow me to
format it either.