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I'm working on a guy's computer from work, and I backed up his files and wiped the hard drive out. I start formatting it, and like the title says, it's taking a long time. The proc is 3.2Ghz, and theres 512MB RAM, so the computer is not slow. Also, the hdd is 120gb.
Is the hard drive living its final hours?
Well, 12 hours isn't normal. Did you do a quick format, or just normal format? Quick takes around 10-20 minutes, and i've seen normal got to 3 hours.
But damn, 12 hours for 23%? Somethings up there. Run chkdisk if you can.
I ran chkdsk 3 days ago. it took about 6 hours to do it. It said it was ok. And no, i didn't pick the quick format option.
UPDATE!
It just hit 24%. That's right, 24%. -_-
i think you need a new harddrive...
are you doing a "low level format" or writing all 0's to every sector? that can take a while but it does seem excessive!
Is the hard drive making any excessive noise? A clicking, loud scratching, or loud vibration?
Could have some really corrupted sectors, like if you live next to a radio station but I doubt that.
Just in case you didn't know, its a bad idea to turn the computer off in the middle of a format.
go to the mfg website and download the diagnostic tools
That's not right.....
Were there any symptoms of harddrive degredation before you formatted? Maybe the harddrive is the reason you're working on the computer for him to begin with?
Have you tried a new IDE cable? Any other devices on the same IDE controller?
If the drive isnt making any unusual noises or running particularly warm, then I'd suspect it's not the problem.
I ended up only formatting 20gigs of it, threw XP on it, formatted the other 90 upon delivery. I let them know they'll need a hard drive. And yes I tried different cables.