formatting hard drive problem

[Vas_Deferens]

I'm trying to format a friend's hard drive, I put in the usual format c: \s. it get's to about 80% then says it has to repair some clusters. After awhile, it just aborts the format. I tried it a few times and it gives me the same thing. So, instead, I ran the EZ disk program from Western Digital to format it, and that works out fine. Right now I'm loading Windows without a hitch. What gives here? Is it ok to use the EZ disk program, or is this an indicator that the hard drive is going bad? By the way it's a WD Caviar 4 gig drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

VD

 

[MOgeeks]

what is used to be on that HD ?

If it used to be formatted/partitioned by other OS other then win9x, there may be chances that there is some file system problem. May be running "fdisk" will help.

Other possiblities include bad sector or since it is a 4GB HD, it is pretty old and a goner

 

[Vas_Deferens]

It's from a Gateway system that had win95. This is the first time it's been formatted since it came out of the box in '97. I did run fdisk and deleted then created a new partition, it still aborted the format.

Thanks for the reply.

VD

 

[AnimeKnight]

did you run scandisk on it?
maybe there is bad sectors on it.. since this is the first time you formatting it and it's a rather old computer.. chances are there might be bad sectors...
not sure though