Hardware·18,976 discussions

Laptop hard drive

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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.

Topic

What is your final goal

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.

FORMAT HARD DRIVE

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.

Sounds like a bad HDD then

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.

Linux distro surface scan

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

I found this on ubuntu forums

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.

HDD

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.

on a live CD you can install

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/

Just a point

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?

HDD

In reply to Laptop hard drive

Try partitioning the disk and reformat after wards.

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