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Geek Culture / Help Formatting My "ruined" hdd in a laptop

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dab
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Posted: 19th Nov 2006 03:01
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Ok, I sort of screwed up my laptop hdd about a year ago. I had no idea what I was doing, and just.... Took out the partition, without formatting first... now know why my laptop wasn't working (as back then, I didn't know why Win was telling me it didn't have enough space on the hdd). So, I was wondering what I could use to format my laptop using DOS. I have the floppy from Win98 (as it only has like 64 megs of ram- If I remember correctly), but format C: isn't an option. So, I need analternative. Obviously, free, but small enough to fit on a CD-r (the drive is old also )

Thanks everyone for you help I'll fix spelling erros in the morning, and make it have more sense in the morning too.

Take heed, never take advantage of the things you need, never let your self be overcome by greed. Walk a strigh line, pick up your speed and try. Everyone deserves a piece of the pie By: Shaggy
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_Nemesis_
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Posted: 19th Nov 2006 03:09
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You've got quite a few options. You can download and burn the Ultimate Boot CD which has many options to format and diagnose hard drive problems. You can grab that from: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

If you've got a copy of the Windows 98 CD, you can boot from that. That has format on it, and you can do your Format C: to format it, though if you've been having problems it'd be best to do a slow format by using /s I think.

If you can grab a Live CD of Linux, no doubt you'll be able to Format with FAT32 from that too.

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CattleRustler
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Posted: 19th Nov 2006 04:00
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if you have a 98 boot floppy then you have format.exe on it, and fdisk as well iirc.

-boot off the floppy
-say no to cdrom support
-at prompt type FORMAT C: /s <--as nem said, this switch makes the hdd bootable by copying command.com to the drive, it is the core dos interpreter
-then use fdisk to partition the drive



Its 9/11 - but its FAKE 9/11 Ts=SQRT(Df/16)
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dab
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Posted: 19th Nov 2006 04:17 Edited at: 19th Nov 2006 07:22
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I'll try out http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/. The problem with the floppy is for some reason, it doesn't have format.exe... Strange eh? Oh well. Thanks for the link, I'll see what I can do. I'll post back soon.

Edit: UBCD so far doesn't seem to work. The tools there are reporting the C: drice (where the HDD is) are saying things such as it not existing, or that it is corrupt. I think I might as well drop this thing down a cliff...

Take heed, never take advantage of the things you need, never let your self be overcome by greed. Walk a strigh line, pick up your speed and try. Everyone deserves a piece of the pie By: Shaggy
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Chris Franklin
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Posted: 19th Nov 2006 10:52
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Put a magnet to it

My nvidia compo entry
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Lucifer
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Posted: 19th Nov 2006 14:36
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Quote: " but format C: isn't an option."


have you tried fdisk?



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dab
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Posted: 19th Nov 2006 20:40
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Fdisk uses the remaining of the Hardrive that wasn't written on before the "accident"./

So It was like this

(Before, the lines are the used space)
|----- |

Then I deleted the partition without formatting the drive first
so it still looked like above, but nothing could access it.

The = is what fdisk uses when I try to use it... Leaves me depressed.
|-----======|

Also, now dos (or bios whatever it is) is telling me that I have an invalid table or something like that. Which probably means something about the hdd I'm sure.

Take heed, never take advantage of the things you need, never let your self be overcome by greed. Walk a strigh line, pick up your speed and try. Everyone deserves a piece of the pie By: Shaggy
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CattleRustler
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Posted: 19th Nov 2006 23:18 Edited at: 19th Nov 2006 23:18
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file allocation table?

have you tried deleting all of the partitions, repartitioning it, and then doing a full format?

this will destroy all the data by the way



Its 9/11 - but its FAKE 9/11 Ts=SQRT(Df/16)
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dab
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Posted: 20th Nov 2006 01:51
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Quote: "have you tried deleting all of the partitions, repartitioning it, and then doing a full format?"


Yah I have.... I think..... I'll see if I can try again.

Quote: "this will destroy all the data by the way"


That's what I want.

Take heed, never take advantage of the things you need, never let your self be overcome by greed. Walk a strigh line, pick up your speed and try. Everyone deserves a piece of the pie By: Shaggy
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dab
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Posted: 25th Nov 2006 08:46
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Quote: "file allocation table?"


No, file partition table. I'll try it again.

Take heed, never take advantage of the things you need, never let your self be overcome by greed. Walk a strigh line, pick up your speed and try. Everyone deserves a piece of the pie By: Shaggy
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CattleRustler
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Posted: 25th Nov 2006 16:53
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Its 9/11 - but its FAKE 9/11 Ts=SQRT(Df/16)
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