Can't Format on One of Drive

bikeme74

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Nov 20, 2002
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Hi There,

I'm on WinXP. I partition my drive into 5 (C,D,E,F,G).
Well, I've sworn I formatted every drive NTSF. I installed my Windows Files in Drive C. I put all my games (4 GB worth) in Drive E (E has 17 GigBytes of space). Everything was fine. I played some of the games like MAME32 and AquaNox. Then a couple hours later, I decided to explore my Drive E. I get this message that Drive E hasn't been formatted and needs to be formatted. I went to my Start Menu and tried to launch my games I played a while back, and I get a message that the games cannot be found or uninstalled.

O.k. fine, I will reformat Drive E again. Well, during the format, it seems like the computer is stuck at a certain point, and the formatting never finish. The Hard Drive LED lights up constantly for a while, then blinks a lot and fast, then lights up constantly again. But the formatting seems like it can't finish and takes way too long.

What's going on? How can I fix this. Please help. All the other partition drives are fine. It's just that one partition, Drive E.

Thanks in Advance.
 

rubikian

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May 20, 2002
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This problem happens when you got bad sector in your drive. Your E is having the bad sector and evantually, the rest of the partition of the same HDD will be affected as well. I'd advice you to back up the files on another drive and prepare to buy a new hard drive. If your drive is less than 1 year then you can have a replacement.

P4 1.7Ghz @ 2GHz, 512MB PC800 RDRAM, 64MB Abit Ti4200, 60GB Maxtor, 120GB Western Digital, 48x24x42 TDK CDRW, 16X ASUS DVDROM, SB! live 5.1DE, Lifeview 3000 TV card
 

ChokeOnThis

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Jun 23, 2004
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You can try the diagnostic utilities provided by the manufacturer with the drive or on their site to try to get a more detailed idea of what you are looking at. In some cases, some, it may be able to fix the issue.