Captain_Xion

1. My OS came already installed on my system hard drive. How is it possible to wipe the drive and reinstall it?

2. Disk formatting is taking a long time. Its stuck with like a little tiny bit left to load. How long does it ususally take? I am changing the file system from FAT32 to NTFS and it is an older hard drive.

claycad

What OS are you trying to reinstall XP, Vista, what?

If its either of those you should be able to put the OS reinstallation disk into your CD drive, boot the computer from the CD (if it doesn't do this automatically you have to enter your BIOS at boot and set it to boot from CD ROM)

After accepting the EULA you will come to a screen that lets you delete or create partitions. Just delete them all if that is what you want and recreate one and it should automatically format in NTFS. You can choose to do a quick format or regular. Quick format just formats it while regular format checks the disk surface for errors while formatting which takes way longer than a quick format.

j.miller

You can completely wipe the drive using Darik's Boot and Nuke: http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Be sure to read all the directions and support documents before using this


Edit: or you can do that ^. posted while i was writing

Captain_Xion

Mine didn't come with Reinstall disks, I don't think.

claycad

is the reinstall information on another partition? depending on what brand it is some put the reinstall information on a different partition instead of giving you discs. Before you wipe the drive you should make sure you either have an OS reinstall disc or partition, otherwise you won't be able to reinstall your OS. It if is on a seperate partition make sure you don't delete it while formatting.

Captain_Xion

I have a seperate drive called "Recovery" would that have the OS install on it?

simpswr

What Brand/Model is the pc?

How are you formatting now?

Captain_Xion

HP Pavillion a1400e

I'm formatting an additional drive, not one that came with the computer.

simpswr

Different brands have different key storke combinations to start the recovery process . . watch your screen closely at boot to see if you see a prompt similar to "Press CNTL+ F11 to start recovery"

Otherwise, look at the HO support site for a guide to recovering the system

Captain_Xion

Well, when I start it up, it gives me the option to start the Windows XP OS or the HP Recovery console.

To the other question, How long does a drive formatting usually take?

simpswr

Once you have your data backed up . . you would choose the HP Recovery Console.

Time to format depends on the size of the drive . . what size is it?

Captain_Xion

30GB. Its sorta old though. 2001.

simpswr

30 Gig should not take more than 20 mins to format . . unless it has a bunch of errors that have to be corrected . .

Captain_Xion

Its been several hours with no errors.

simpswr

Does not sound like a dependable drive . .

Captain_Xion

I started again and its going faster. When I did it before, it froze a My Computer screen, so I suppose the previous problem was just a random Windows glitch. I'll let you know how it works out.

EDIT: ITS STUCK AT 53%! ARGGHHHHHH!!

It keeps getting stuck when I do a full format. You did mean it would take 20 mins for a full format, right?

simpswr

Should not take much longer that that . . you can run diagnostics on the hard drive to rule out failure, but it ain't sounding too good,

Samsung http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...ort_HUTIL.html
Seagate/Maxtor/Quantum http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...oads/seatools/
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/
IBM/Hitachi http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
fujitsu/Seimens http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/download...es/#diagnostic
IBM/Hitachi http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT