How can I format this harddrive.Is there a program I can download ?

Still? After what? download Malware bytes from Download.com and follow the instructions.

you need a commercial program like partition magic to do this, there is no sys-built-in way.

ok ...the issue is only that it might recognize the operating (win98) system if its installed on it ..if it was just a slave there will be no problems..just attach it ..on the bus and power ...and boot the system ...if you want you may use a partition magic program to format and rename it ...but you can do that with the xp ...by clicking right on the drive in my computer and format from there ... if it doesn't want to format it ..just boot from the installation cd ( xp) and continue like a normal installation until you are at the point where you have to choose the partition to install the program ...choose the new added hard disk and format it ...by deleting and reformat ....but after this just stop the installation and restart the old OS ...but I'm sure that you will be able to format it quick from xp directly ...so , just attach it and boot...click my computer to see if it sees it ..and format

How did you format your harddrive?
Did you use the Restoration CD, or use a full installation CD?

If you formatted without using one of these, you WIPED your harddrive CLEAN.

NO Operating System. NO Programs. NO personal information. NADA!

Suggest you go online to the laptop manufacturers website, and Support. Find the Contact Us. Call them and ask how to obtain the
Restoration CD. (Restoration Disk)

When you get it, do a REPAIR, not a Fresh Install.

Can you access this drive on a non-Vista system? If so, try the Simple Tech WWW site for a diagnostics program?

There are also a number of other software programs that can detect and mark the bad sectors or locations on your drive as bad.

Once those sectors are marked (at the FAT Table) as bad Vista may allow you to access that drive again. IF it does, copy everything available to a DVD. Now reformat the drive but DON'T trust it.

Bottom line is that I personally would not trust that drive again with ANY data that is important to me... I hope you will agree with me. If you decide to use it anyway please backup to two locations or drives!

Good Luck!

Okay, here is what you can do to just verify that you haven't lost all the data on the hard drive (HDD failure, due to the manufacturer or a drop or heavy shake). Download a copy of Slax Linux www.slax.org 32 bit version will work, and burn the ISO they give you to a CD. I would recommend using Alcohol 120 www.alchoholsoft.com. Boot in Slax, and see if you can get the computer to recognize the HDD. If so, backup your important data onto other hard drives or thumb drives. Then when you have enough data backed up, you can format the hard drive.

Now, to get really fancy, lets say you have a somewhat corrupt formatted hard drive, and enough data free to encompass the data you have on the hard drive. Well, what you can do is download a program called "partition magic" and do a partial non-destructive re-partition. Respond if you need to get to that point so I can get you a link to the program.

You first need to find out which video format your unit is able to play. Some of the inexpensive players claim that they can play videos in popular format such as wmv and mp4, but in reality those videos have to be converted to another format such as smv or amv. Once you find out which format the videos need to be converted to, download the program off the internet to your computer. The software is usually free and can be found on the manufacturers' website (or a link thereto). From my experience, I've found that it was always best to store videos in the original format on the harddrive of the computer. Convert the videos and have the output files on another folder on the harddrive. After the conversions are completed, connect the mp3 player to the computer and copy or transfer the files to the unit's memory.

Your harddrive shouldn't have taken a long time to format during the Windows setup procedure, the format operation carried out during setup is a very simple format and doesn't normally take long.
If you know the make of harddrive fitted to your machine, go to the manufacturers website and download the diagnostic tools for your harddrive.
If you don't know the make of harddrive then Hitachi's "Drive Fitness Test" is a good all round diagnostic tool for all makes of harddrive.
Whichever tool you use the best way to run it is from a bootable CD, so you will need to download the tool to a computer with a CD burner. The diagnostic tools are run in a virtual DOS environment created by the CD when you start your compter up with the CD in the CD tray.
You can download the Hitachi tester and read the instructions here:
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
Please come back and let me know the test results.

yea this is a hard one you will need a recovery program something good that will go in deep and find all the shadow programs on your (HDD) Hard drive. if your computer does not recognize this HDD or memory stick this means u have reformatted a computer and the HDD or memory stick has been taken out half way through the format process. if you get a recovery program this means u will not get everything off it will only take the shadows of all your programs and files.

I hope this helps


From the best man

try downloading any program that manages disks (partition magic for example ) and see if all the space appearsin that program, if so asign to that space a drive letter and format it .... (with the program that u will use )