Troubleshooting Hard Disk Reformatting Issues

[UrbanXrisis]

I am trying to reformat my hdd when something weird happened. I have a P4 desktop and I wanted to reinstall everything on there. So I booted from the windows CD and it formatted and installed windows XP sp1... when the computer restarted, it said that some file was missing and it wouldn't start and asked me to reinstall the OS. So I did, but this time it wouldn't reformat. I hooked up my hdd though a USB converter into my laptop, and I figured that I could reformat my hdd from my Laptop... the hard drive shows up and when I double click it, I can enter it. But when I try to copy a document on to the HDD, it says

"Cannot create or replace [file name]: Cannot find the specified file. Make sure you specify the correc path and file name."

When I try to change the name of the hdd...

"The volume lable is not valid. Please enter a valid volume lable."

When I hit the reformat button after right clicking on the hdd, it does absolutly nothing. It's as if I never clicked the button.

When I go into properties, it shows that there is 0 free space and 0 used space and that the file system is a RAW.

My question is, how can I reformat my hdd and install a new OS? Will I have to take this to a computer shop to fix?

 

[robphy]

Put the drive back in the desktop. [I have no experience with HDs via USB.] As opposed to merely reformatting [the partition], did you try to delete the partition, then [re]create the partition, and then format as [I assume] NTFS? The XP install should allow you to do these steps (delete,create,format) before installing.

 

[UrbanXrisis]

yes, that's what I did originally, and what I have been doing all along. it allows me to delete it, then create it (RAW), then when it goes to the reformatting, it just stops. I can chose what type I want (quick or normal) but it just stays at 0% done.

 

[russ_watters]

Sounds like the drive is dying.