Ok so I'm having some issues and I'm not sure what they are..

My laptop hard drive died and I just purchased a new one.
Now Here's the catch, for some reason trying to format the new drive ntfs with the windows xp
cd is taking like an hour to get to 1% and then it caps at 11% and stays there.

now i erased the disk using a low lvl straight 0's wright just to clear anything out.

I have attempted to use parted magic to format the drive as ntfs and went through all the steps...

It set the drive as ntfs and saved the state...but the format took like 5 sec and then when i put windows xp disc back in it did not recognized a file system on the drive... what do i need to do here.

obviously parted magic doesn't actually format the drive.. i need a tool that i can use to actually format the HDD to NTFS...

Please help.

Assuming that your new HDD has no hardware problems, you don't need any additional tool to partition nor format. The Installation CD of Windows XP is enough.

Except for specific cases, the XP Setup program, during XP's installation, will tell you that the disk is not partitioned nor formatted and will give you the option to use the entire disk as one NTFS partition.

So, clean you disk (no partition, no format), and simply run the XP installation setup program.

If you find any additional problems using the XP installation program, then come back to report any messages you see, so to know where the problem could be.

So yea like i said the disk has been wiped... straight 0 wipe has no format or anything on it

but the windows xp setup disc when i select the unallocated space which in this case is showing as the entire HDD... and select format NTFS full....it sits at 0 and never does anything....ever.


PS. I knew that the windows xp setup disc should have been enough to partition/format the drive...

the reason that asked about other options was that I was hoping to find a alternative that would actually fully format the drive not just label it with the format i selected and not really wright a file system to it.

I wanted to find one that worked or could be added to UBCD, or maybe launched stand alone from a USB flash drive.

That way i could isolate the problem as not coming from the CD/DVD reader or the XP disc itself...as in a problem with the reading or copying the NTFS file system protocol over to the HDD.

@Tantilus,

First you said you tried formatting, then wipe, then again formatting. That's why I suggested to wipe it again and start from no partition at all (unallocated space is not the same as unformatted space).

About formatting in 5 seconds. Gparted normally is used for partitioning. You can set also the "id type of partition", usually number 7 for NTFS. But setting the id type is not the same as formatting.

You need to actually select the format function to actually format the partition (not only selecting the id type). But even the format function can take only a few seconds, if the format is being made with a "quick format" method.

Now, to be sure that the hardware is working correctly, you could run the adequate diagnostics tool, depending on the HDD's brand (which you did not mention).

Finally, the problem could be related to the xp disc media (scratches?) or the xp support (driver) to the HDD's connection (sata?).

Is the HDD correctly detected in the BIOS (including its correct size)?

Is it SATA or PATA? If PATA, then make sure you have the correct jumpers on the drive. If it SATA, make sure if your MOBO supports only SATA 1 and not 2, and your HDD is SATA 2, then you will also need jumpers to make sure the drive is read as SATA 1 or could cause issues.

Also need to make sure your BIOS is set up correctly and displaying the drive and correct size as was stated before.

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~Just StopSpazzing~

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