Re: Reformatting the C system drive
- From: "Shenan Stanley" <newshelper@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:13:52 -0500
Ron Hirsch wrote:
Thanks, Al & Shenan, for your replies
To do a "regular" format, not a "quick" format takes about 90
minutes on a new unformatted 400 GB hard drive.
True - but I cannot recall asking you to do either. Quick should be fine if
you know the drive is okay. Full should be done if you have doubts about
the drive itself.
I am not changing any partitions - there is only one on the disk.
When restoring a drive via a TI backup image, TI must simply do a
"quick" format before writing enverything back to the disk, since
the restoration usually take only 10-15 minutes. But I don't want
that.
That is a restoration process designed by the OEM - not a true imaging
process then (although it could be a full imaging process if very little was
originally on the drive.)
When I do a "chkdsk c: /F" in the run window, that happens the next
time I boot up, and there are 3 steps.
When I do the chkdsk in the disk managment window, there are 5
steps (I believe), and the last one takes quite a while. I have had
numerous occasions, whrn a disk was reported as "Healthy" by
Windows, on the 3 step process, and in teh disk management window.
But when I did the check in disk management, the final step (5?)
froze along the way, indicating that there was some deep trouble
that the 3 step chkdsk did not address. When this occurs, the drive
is either history, or possibly a long format will restore it. So I
figure it's worth the effort.
After doing a long format, I would run the drive and do the 5 step
process in Disk management. If that still locked up in step 5, the
drive would be discarded. If it went through OK, I will try to use
it again.
Better to use the actual hard disk drive manufacturer's free diagnostics and
low-level format utilities - IMO.
I also see no problem formatting a hard drive outside of the
machine it is intended for, using another machine running the same
XP Pro operating system. Am I missing something here?
Didn't say there was a problem with it - just seems like a waste of time and
effort. Putting the drive in the machine it is intended for and utilizing
the proper tools (included with a proper installation media for Windows XP)
you can do everything you would have done by addig extra steps and
connecting said drive to another machine in another way.
And, to try and resolve the logoff/crashesI've been having, I have
numerous times restored a previous image to the C drive. That
resolved the issue, for a short while, but then it returned. I am
beginning to think that the drive itself has problems. Restoring an
image gets around them, for a while, but then the problems with the
drive start to impact things, and the shutdown crashes start in
again.
Based on this, it's improbable that even a full format may not
solve my issues, and the replacement drive stands a much better
chance of fixing things.
Agreed.
Plus there is nothing keeping you from doing a two-fold test.
- Image the drive as it is now (problems and all.)
- Put the new drive in the machine and create a partition and apply the
image you made.
Same problems?
- Restore the drive using whatever the machine manufacturer gave you.
Same problems later?
Investigate what *you* may be doing/not doing that could be causing this
issue or look into other hardware possibilities (motherboard, memory,
power...)
--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
.
- References:
- Re: Reformatting the C system drive
- From: Shenan Stanley
- Re: Reformatting the C system drive
- Prev by Date: Re: dual boot XP and Vista?
- Next by Date: Re: Deleted a key item in WinXP logon part of registry
- Previous by thread: Re: Reformatting the C system drive
- Next by thread: Re: Reformatting the C system drive
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
