Working on a Toshiba laptop that came stock with Vista basic. I'm trying to format the thing, but it's at 1% after an hour of formatting. What could be causing this?Disk on the fritz, probably. How are you doing the format? Have you checked the hdd data and power cables?

Yeah, I was thinking there was a bad sector on the HDD so I was doing a full format, but it seemed to format okay using quick format so I guess everything is okay. Not NECESSARILY. A full format RUNS chkdsk /r before formatting. From what you've said, I think you should run chkdsk /r before going any further.I would agree, a quick format won’t tell you if the HDD has any bad sectors. I would RECOMMEND using a disk verifying utility like Spinrite (www.grc.com). It runs around $50.00 but it does a great job identify and fixing bad sectors. The utility takes about a day depending on the SIZE of the hhd to run and repair but once done, you should be able to get the whole disk back. Then you can run a full format and it should be ready for reuse.

Ken

Quote from: kenf916 on November 06, 2011, 10:09:29 AM

I would agree, a quick format won’t tell you if the HDD has any bad sectors. I would recommend using a disk verifying utility like Spinrite (www.grc.com). It runs around $50.00 but it does a great job identify and fixing bad sectors. The utility takes about a day depending on the size of the hhd to run and repair but once done, you should be able to get the whole disk back. Then you can run a full format and it should be ready for reuse.

Ken

www.kmbl.us