Hatrack River Forum: YATST -- yet another tech support thread

This is topic YATST -- yet another tech support thread in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

One of my hard drives has been acting up lately and giving me a lot of read access failures, so I decided to reformat it.

I go to My Computer->Manage->Disk Management and right-click on the drive I want to reformat, but the Format menu is disabled.

Anybody know why that might be, and what I ought to do about it?

Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :

Memorize the drive letter, then reboot in DOS. It should default to the correct directory, then type "format x:" where x is the letter of the drive you want to format.

If that doesn't work, report back?

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

I actually tried doing that in a cmd window. First it gave me this warning:

quote:
Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first.
ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N) y

I said yes, and it appeared to be going through the format, but when it got done, it said

quote:
System Partition is not allowed to be formatted.

Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :

Bizzaro. That's the limit of my knowledge without resorting to third party formatting software. =/

Actually, it looks like it's saying no because it says the partition is in use - which, if Windows is running, it might be (stupid background processes). I'd suggest actually trying to reboot into DOS and trying the format command from there and seeing if it gives you the same error.

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Oh, no, you can't format it from within the CMD window in Windows. You have to boot to DOS. Which I don't remember offhand if you can do with Windows XP - I don't believe there's an actual DOS available.

If I recall correctly - it's been a while since I've done this - you'd have to have DOS on a bootable floppy in order to format the drive.

Are you planning on reinstalling Windows XP? If so, there should be the option to format the hard drive and then install it through its options. Have you tried that?

Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :

Wait a sec. IS it your system partition, Porter?

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

No, it's not my system partition. It's a small extra HD which I added and mainly use for downloading stuff. It's drive letter is f. There's nothing important on it.

No, I'm not planning on reinstalling XP.

I tried rebooting into DOS, but as you said, that's not an option in XP. I tried it in Safe Mode, but got the same results.

I'll pull out my XP installation disk and see if there's any way it will let me format.

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

If you're not planning on installing XP on it, then don't go with the install disk - it only formats before installing the OS. It won't work for your purposes.

My apologies - I didn't know you weren't talking about your primary hard drive. I should have asked. My advice in the previous post is only for the main drive that your OS is on, so ignore it.

You have no problem reading the drive? It otherwise works perfectly fine and normal? Formatting it is the only problem you have?

Posted by Mr.Funny (Member # 4467) on :

I'm not terribly experienced, but would pulling the drive out and hooking it up to another computer and formatting it from there help?

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

I think I know why it thinks it's my system partition -- it's the only IDE hard drive on the system. The two main drives are SCSI.

I booted up with the XP installation disk and was able to get to a DOS prompt. It's currently formatting (I'm on Bev's computer now). We'll see if it works.

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Huh. I wouldn't have thought you could do that. I'm happy to be proven wrong. [Smile]

Good luck.

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

Oops. I broke it.

It turns out that *was* the system partition, and now I cannot boot.

Weird.

So, now I'm off to try to repair it.

*crosses fingers*

Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :

It probably housed your MBR. My IDE drives do that on my SCSI system. It's a pain in the ascot. Just run chkdsk /r with the repair console and you should be okay.

Posted by BaoQingTian (Member # 8775) on :

You may also try fdisk /mbr

-although you may want to double check the syntax, it's been awhile since a linux installation has failed that bad.

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

It's all working now.

The real solution: Change the boot order in my BIOS so that it tries to boot from SCSI before it tries to boot from IDE.

I'm kicking myself, because I should have been able to figure that out on my own, and it would have taken less than five minutes.

Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :

quote:
I'm kicking myself

Don't you have goats to do that now?

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

Nah. The goats are cowards.

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

Well, crap. All that bother, and the HD is still giving me read access failures. I guess it's just it's time. [Frown]