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  • #2198609

    Laptop hard drive

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    by lucianvibe ·

    Hi,

    I have been trying to format my Dell D600 LATITUDE hard drive with DBAN, but the remaining time stays on over 300 hours. It then stops saying there is an error with the hard drive and formatting cant continue. Does anyone know a solution to this and if there is any software I can use to format. Otherwise the laptop is useless.

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    • #3021333

      What is your final goal

      by slayer_ ·

      In reply to Laptop hard drive

      You want to format, but then what?

      Because if you are purely trying to install an OS, all current OS’s (Even XP) come with auto formating utilities when you run their standard install.

      • #3021328

        FORMAT HARD DRIVE

        by lucianvibe ·

        In reply to What is your final goal

        I have tried to install XP and other LInUX distro but the installation will not go ahead because of this disk error when the formatting starts.

        • #3021326

          Sounds like a bad HDD then

          by slayer_ ·

          In reply to FORMAT HARD DRIVE

          Try booting up mini XP or a nix distro and do a surface scan of your drive.

          You can also try checking the SMART data. I am unsure how to do this without windows installed.

        • #3021322

          Linux distro surface scan

          by lucianvibe ·

          In reply to Sounds like a bad HDD then

          Would you be able to advise how to do the surface scan with a lunix distro. I have Ubuntu 7 at my disposal if you are familiar with it

        • #3021318

          I found this on ubuntu forums

          by slayer_ ·

          In reply to Linux distro surface scan

          http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1011561.html

          The commands they tell you to type, need to be entered in a command prompt.

        • #3021313

          HDD

          by lucianvibe ·

          In reply to I found this on ubuntu forums

          Can use any of these in the terminal window as I cant install any of the programs on the hard drive without having first installed the OS. THere is currently nothing on the HDD.

        • #3021298

          on a live CD you can install

          by slayer_ ·

          In reply to HDD

          It will install to the RAM drive and disappear when you restart.

          However, I believe the third post or so described how to do it without installing anything.

          -Edit
          I checked the built in one, doesn’t support NTFS.

          Too bad you don’t have Hirens downloaded. It has lots of HDD tools and it has MiniXP on it as a bootable CD. SO very handy. Including partitioning and formatting software. MBR fixing. Almost everything you could ever need.
          It’s the top item in my toolbox.
          http://www.hirensbootcd.net/

    • #3021327

      Just a point

      by the ‘g-man.’ ·

      In reply to Laptop hard drive

      see where you clicked ‘start a discussion’, did you not notice the ‘ask a question’ button right next to it?

    • #3021201

      HDD

      by npbatiller ·

      In reply to Laptop hard drive

      Try partitioning the disk and reformat after wards.

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