Need to reformat a WD 320gb 7200rpm HD...windows hosing

you need to reformat your hardisk ask your friend to give to you the xp installation CD you need it to reformat your computer..

You have to know that in order to have a HDD formatted with FAT32 the space must not exceed 32GB. so you need to partition your HD into two logical hard-drives then have one of the partitions in the size of anything less than 32GB, then simply reformat using FAT32 attributes.

If you are using windows vista, then its super easy to partition and format your external HD while logged on. if you need more instructions on how to do this, let me know.

Hope that helps.

try another windows xp disk or burn another copy of the disk you have. it's also possible that there's a problem with the optical drive that you're using.

If you are using Windows Vista then format your external drive with exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table, aka FAT64), or NTFS. And if you are using Windows XP then only solution is to format drive with NTFS file system.
How to do that, just right click on HD from My Computer an click format.

Easy enough To format your hard drive, insert the installation DVD(Vista) and go through the options until you get to choose which partition to install Vista on and just click the button at the bottom that says "Format".

Much the same in XP

you need to give it a drive letter

A more reliable way to do this is via the computer management console

Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer management / Disk Management.

Your drive should show up in here.

if it says Healthy and just above that gives the file system eg. NTFS or FAT32 etc it should be fine but may just need a drive letter.

If it does dot say any of those then right click on it and use the format option. Select how you want to format it (NTFS for XP is preffered)
and then tell it to do a FULL format. and also give it a drive letter !
It may take a while but I find it more reliable overall.

If it didn't have a drive letter then right click and use the Change Drive Letter and Paths option, then add a drive letter and use the one it offers.

I like to re-boot just to be sure windows sees it properly

hi ,

looks like u primary hard drive is inside the laptop and so should be displayed as c : drive ,

and the reason , the external hard drive is not displayed seperately is csue ., the external HD  may be added as slave to the internal HD .,

can u tell me ,make a right click on c:/ drive and choose properties : and tell the totalsize dispalyed 

1. reformat it again
2. while installing windows xp, you should format it in Fat(32) full format
3. dont format as quick format
4. try it

Halarious, I had the same problem yet I used norton ghost. At least you still show 160 gb. Mine went all the way to 60 gb. Here is what I had to do to reclaim the lost. I downloaded something called "Magic Boot Disk" It gave me the whole 320 back yet have not found good cloning software yet. Magic Boot Disc is freeware avaliable at http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.02.10-Magic-Boot-Disk/ Good luck cloning

Get Hiren's Boot CD. It has many utilities which includes data recovery, low level format and hard disk partitioning.