Can't full format under winxp, drive clicks

Computer Forum Storage Devices
1

Hi there,

I recently purchased a Samsung Spinpoint T166 500 GB Hard Drive

Sata -300.

I couldn’t get past 7% in full format using WinXp’s setup. The drive began clicking at 7% so i returned it.

Got the same hard drive, this time, i can’t format past 8% and it clicks at 8%. However, i can easly do a quick format.

Can you guys give me some insight to this issue?

Thanks in advance

Regards,
vertozia

2

personally, i’d DBAN the drive, this involves downloading DBAN & burning the downloaded .iso image to CD / DVD and boot the CD you burned with only new HDD attached (Samsung Spinpoint T166 500GB) & DBAN will totally blank (wiipe) the HDD, removing any problems too

Edit: DBAN will probably take 12 hours to completely wipe 500GB, then the HDD will be like new & ready to format or you could look at the manufacturers website for their own utilities

3

Id would turn smart monitoring on in BIOS and download one of the programs which will give you a SMART monitoring report. From this you will get a detailed look at the state of the drive.

4

thanks a lot, i’ll do everything you guys told me.

regarding DBAN, i tried it on the previous hardisk, its a no go.

i’ll give this one a shot, but in the end i’ll probably end up exchanging the drive for another brand.

is Seagate the best in the market right now?

thanks again

5

i think so, opinions differ widely but personally i prefer Seagate

6

DBAN had no success, SMART option had no real effect

7

SMART doesn’t have an effect. It tells you if your drive is knackered.

Use this program
PassMark DiskCheckup - SMART hard drive monitoring utility

and this table
S.M.A.R.T. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

8

but i have no real use of that without Windows, i need to full format it first