Re: "The disk in drive G cannot be formatted" "Windows was unable to complete the format"

The technique is described in Answer ID 3119 of the Seagate knowledge base. I doubt it was a hardware issue, since you were able to access the drive. Nonetheless, you accomplished your goal and that's all that really matters. Enjoy all that extra disk space.

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Leonard Grey
Errare humanum est

rsl18@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
1. Just a clumsy expression of a reason why we might have an old 60GB disk we want to make a different use of.

2. Yes; trying to erase an internal hard disk, moved from HD0 to HD1 on the IDE cable.

3. HD is the Maxtor 96147H6. "Manufacturer" now in the Seagate family. I went to the Seagate site, and what I was able to find was a reference and redirection to an MS KB about how to use Disk Management, which I already knew failed to reformat the logical G: partition.

4. If you know how to navigate on the Seagate website to download a low-level formatting program, that would be useful information. The program that they do offer as a free download, DiskWizard, does not do it in my situation, as far as I could determine. To repeat, if you know how to get their low-level formatiing program, that could possibly be useful in the future, so let me know.

5. With some help from another source, I was informed the existence of CLJ; Capacity Limiting Jumper. The JPG diagram I downloaded from Seagate, of jumper settings, did not name or otherwise identify the settings for the Maxtor 96147H6. The Seagate JPG-format chart showed four groupings of Seagate drives, with both consistencies and inconsistencies in jumper positions for CLJ. I speculated that the existing jumper setting was in a CLJ position. I changed it to what I presumed was a Cable Select position. I then used Disk Management to reformat the old HD. It worked.

So the crux of the problem was a hardware matter, and could not have been solved by any software utility.

"Leonard Grey" <Leonard@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:%23kyoII6LIHA.1188@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Whoa...what does your new 320GB hard disk have to do with some unexplained 60GB hard disk?

Are you trying to erase an internal hard disk that you have installed in your computer? Go to the website of the disk manufacturer and download their free low-level formatting program.

[And make sure you're erasing the correct disk. Don't laugh - bad things happen.]
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Leonard Grey
Errare humanum est

rsl18@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
We bought a new 320 GB internal drive and installed WinXP Pro on it. A previous user of a 60 GB hard drive seems to have partitioned it into two partitions of approx. 30 GB each. Drive letters are F and G. We reformatted Logical drive F: NTFS without a problem. All attempts to format G: fail. It is not possible to open G:. What we want to do is reformat the entire 60GB physical drive, as a single partition.

I have lost my notes on the navigation path to get to "Disk Management" but when I got there, F: was identified as NTFS and "healthy" but G had no File System type shown, although it was also called "healthy."

Please remind me of how to navigate to the Disk Management utility. Getting there will not enable me to format G, as my attempts have failed completely, but I want to know for future maintenance.

Please tell me how I can force the operating system to delete both partitions and reformat the entire 60GB.









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