Can't format = bad drive?

[bevills1]

Trying to format a laptop hard drive from Win98 startup disk error is given "Trying to recover allocation unit 111,456" or some number where format freezes. Attempt to format from Win2k or WinXP disk freezes at 19% and gives error that Windows can't format the drive with instruction to be sure drive is properly connected and configured. I even tried repartitioning including trying more than 1 partition of different sizes with identical results. Is this indicative of a bad drive or some other problems that might be fixed?

[akrako1]

happen to know what brand makes the drive? Most common manufacturers (Maxtor, WD, etc) provide diagnostic utilities you can download and run off a cd/3.5". You might need to pop out the drive to read the model. If you still can't find it, what model notebook is it?

[bevills1]

It's a 10 GB drive in an old Compaq laptop which is probably its original drive, but I don't know the manufacturer.

[AlecWest]

It's a 10 GB drive in an old Compaq laptop which is probably its original drive, but I don't know the manufacturer.

Knowing the manufacturer could be important ... especially if it's a Maxtor drive. Back then, Maxtor had a "specific" disk you were supposed to use (created by Maxtor) to format the drive ... and they didn't recommend any other format method.

If it is a Maxtor, you'll need to (somehow) acquire the Maxtor-specific format software on a floppy. I ran into this issue myself on a 40 meg drive ... but fortunately had their disk. And, if Maxtor had brand-specific formatting software, it could be that other manufacturers back then had them, too.

P.S. BTW, at the time I bought that 40 meg drive, it was the smallest drive on the shelf (on a "clearance" sale). They were already selling much heftier 10+ gig drives. So, if my 40 meg drive required brand-specific formatting software, your 10GB drive might also.

[bevills1]

Can someone tell me where the hard drive might be located as well as any instruction on its removal as I'm unfamiliar with laptop hardware beyond the CD, floppy and other drives that are designed for easy removal/replacement.

[BJ_M]

be helpful to know what type (model) of laptop it is first

[bevills1]

It's Compaq Armada 7400.

[BJ_M]

a model that old may need something like diskmanager if you dont have the original boot disk ... which is also not on compaq site (that i could find) -- though all other drivers are there

http://www.ontrack.com/diskmanager/

[MJA]

+ your HD is slow and small.think about invisting in a new HD .you can get a cheap 40GB for less than $50 now

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380%204025&bop=And&Order=PRICE

[BJ_M]

he has a laptop -- which has a bios that does not support much in the way of other Hd's

[ybeard]

Maybe the answer is to spend a few dollars and buy a laptop from this century? vbg Seriously, I doubt a format utility from Maxtor would do anything for the person. Sounds like that drive is seriously toast. It's possible that a single sector might only be bad and that a low level format of the drive "might" allow the drive to be formatted, but I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable on down the road as to its integrity.

Heck, I'd think even if the bios is so old that it wouldn't recognize a 40gb drive as a 40, couldn't one still use Disk Manager or something of the like to partition it up into multiple partitions? Even worse, even if it only will partition and format the drive out to a 10gb, you'd still be further ahead in buying the new drive. It's bound to be a 4200rpm drive currently in the machine.

Did a quick Google search...
http://www.drivesolutions.com/cgi-bin/shop/ug2store.cgi?command=listitems&kind=cpl&pos...d&itemid=cpl92

[akrako1]

I agree that it is a bad sign for your hard disk. Given the age of the laptop, even if you managed to get the drive working, I'd be highly suspect of it's reliability. Since it's surely a 4200 rpm drive, you'd also get a significant improvement in speed if you upgraded to a 5400 or 7200 rpm drive.

[bevills1]

At http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodN...5&swEnvOID=181
there's a harddrive firmware update utility. Does anybody know whether that download might be used to format the 10 GB drive? Would I need all downloads from that page, or how do I determine which are needed? I'd not mind buying another drive if I can determine how to do the replacement, but I don't want to spend $50 or more on such an old laptop unless I'm sure I can get it working.

[BJ_M]

no it will not format old drive

[oldandinthe way]

This is not a job for the inexperienced. If you can't format the drive it is because of a hardware problem which makes it impossible to access part of the drive.

Your 10mb hard disk is likely to be an early IDE drive which was low-level formated at the factory and could not be low-level formated by the user to place secotr marks on the drive and lock out bad sectors.

A replacement is needed, and it will need to be a very similar antique drive. The sort of thing that someone has gathering dust on a shelf or has already gone to the dump.

If you can't figure out how to open it up and determine the drive model number in it, just trash the whole computer.

[ozymango]

It's Compaq Armada 7400.

PII? I've put a 40gb drive (standard laptop drive dimensions) in one of these, doesn't require anything too weird. You can still find drivers at compaq's site, the link for the manual is:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/UCR/SupportManual/TPM_387792-001/TPM_387792-001.pdf

Theoretically you can run Windows 2000 on this, but it's pretty painful, Windows 98 behaves very nicely on it, though.

EDIT: Instructions on how to pull the drive are in the PDF above, it's not at all painful. Also the PCMCIA slot is Cardbus (32-bit), which is nice.

[bevills1]

Thanks ozymango for link to instructions, and removing hard drive was very simple. The drive is an IBM Travelstar model DCXA-210000, ATA/IDE, 5V 500mA 4200 RPM, and the laptop is PII I believe but not certain. Some drives at the NewEgg link given by MJA are ATA150 and others ATA-6. Is there a way to determine whether any of these drives will work as a replacement drive? One of the reviewers at the NewEgg link used 20 GB Hitachi Travelstar drive there to replace a 10 GB IBM Travelstar but no way to tell if same model as mine.

Links I found had drivers for Win2k and earlier Windows versions, and it states max memory is 256 MB. Thus I should be able to run Win2k or Win98 if I can get it to work. Is there a way to determine memory amount after booting to CD, does the laptop have BIOS setup and how is accessed if it does? I see nothing about BIOS or its setup in the manual unless I just over looked it.

[otpw1]

FWIW - I had a compaq 1255 with a hitachi drive that did precisely the same as yours. The quantum drive zero fill utility allowed the drive to move the bad sectors out of use and added three years to the useful life of the drive.
The last time I did that it took almost 10 meg off the size of the drive and that scared me enough to replace the drive.
YMMV.
Good luck.

[buttzilla]

Maybe the answer is to spend a few dollars and buy a laptop from this century? vbg Seriously, I doubt a format utility from Maxtor would do anything for the person. Sounds like that drive is seriously toast. It's possible that a single sector might only be bad and that a low level format of the drive "might" allow the drive to be formatted, but I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable on down the road as to its integrity.

Heck, I'd think even if the bios is so old that it wouldn't recognize a 40gb drive as a 40, couldn't one still use Disk Manager or something of the like to partition it up into multiple partitions? Even worse, even if it only will partition and format the drive out to a 10gb, you'd still be further ahead in buying the new drive. It's bound to be a 4200rpm drive currently in the machine.

Did a quick Google search...
http://www.drivesolutions.com/cgi-bin/shop/ug2store.cgi?command=listitems&kind=cpl&pos...d&itemid=cpl92

Not everyone has the cash to spend on a new laptop.

[bevills1]

Subsequent attempts to format continued to fail with Win2k and WinXP, but format from Win98SE startup disk finally succeeded. The Win98 format did halt numerous times giving error "Trying to recover allocation unit 223,456" or other number, but format finally went to completion. It continues to amaze me how Win98 does some things better than newer Windows versions, and I'm very glad I still have it.

When I got the system, it would freeze at the screen that shows "Starting Windows 2000 Professional" which is why I decided to do format and reinstall, and it's why I'm still suspicious the hard drive may be bad. I've had problems on some desk tops with drives that had bad sectors which grew worse over time causing programs to fail to run for which drive replacement fixed the problem. Time will tell, but I suspect this current drive will exhibit such problems with use.

One problem I find during and after install is laptop full screen is utilized when booted to CD, but display is in screen center with a little over an inch black border around the display area. I tried changing resolution in Windows, but the problem persists. Is there a setting in Win2k to fix that, or is this possibly a display driver issue?

[ozymango]

Glad to see you're able to make some progress with your laptop!

A few answers to some of your questions, off the top of my head:

* To get to the BIOS on a Compaq, when you boot the computer, watch for a little white blinky square (maybe 1/4" square) in the upper right (or left, I can't remember) corner of your computer screen. When you see it, hit F10 -- that'll take you into the BIOS.

* There's a native display resolution for your laptop that has to match the display driver resolution for you to get a "full image" on your screen. Like, if your native screen resolution is 1024x768 and you set the driver for 800x600, it will only fill 800x600 pixels on your screen, so you end up with picture in a box -- the screen won't "stretch" the pixels to fit.

So you have to play around with the settings until you find the native setting; I'd try 1024x768 at 16bit, 60hz, see if that works. If not, 800x600, 16bit, 60hz.

* I've had boot/format issues before with PCs that I was sure was the hard drive and it turned out it was bad RAM, that can cause your PC to lock up in pretty much the exact same place every time. Go to www.memtest86.com and download their free tool, run it, and see if it reports any bad areas in the memory. RAM for your Compaq is (I'm pretty sure) standard PC100 laptop ram, not hard to find.

Good luck!

EDIT: Oh, yeah, I'm sure a 20gb drive will fit in your PC, I've put a 40gb drive before with no problem.

[bevills1]

The link in the 5/9 ybeard post shows drives up to 100 GB for this laptop, but prices at the link are close to double NewEgg prices. The link that has manual with instruction on drive removal does indicate PC100 memory. However, I see no light blinking during startup, and pressing F10 repeatedly during startup does nothing. The 1024x768 resolution does give full screen display, and thanks for that info. I have a memory diagnostics program from Microsoft. Are you familiar with it or have any idea whether it may effectively test memory?

[ozymango]

I'm not familiar with the Microsoft tool, but I'd go ahead and run it (assuming it runs on your machine!) and see if it tells you anything useful. Though I'd probably still go ahead and run the other tool as well.

As for the BIOS, I guess this model is one of the Compaqs that stores the BIOS info on a partition on the hard drive -- it's a non-dos partition and you have to install the BIOS partition first, from a floppy, on a non-partitioned drive; that creates a special boot partition, and then you can install the Windows partition. A bit of a pain in the keister, as I don't think you can install the BIOS partition after-the-fact

BUT, all is not lost! You can boot from a special floppy (or set of floppies, depending on the model Compaq) and access the BIOS that way. Ideally you boot from the special floppy, and it has a tool that creates the BIOS partition on your hard drive; then you can install your OS from there.

Anyway, go the the following link:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us...SG_I8409-24909

You'll download the "softpaq" to a working computer, and run the program, this will allow you to create a floppy (or couple of floppies) that you can use to boot your laptop, and once it's booted you should have a BIOS menu plus a bunch of tools/options on how to "install" the OS from that point.

Hope that helps!

EDIT: Okay, I've double checked and that does appear to be the correct boot disk, it's doesn't explicitly say "for portables" but the release notes cover the Armada 7400 so you should be good to go.

[bevills1]

The laptop has just a single USB 1.1 connection. Would a wireless USB adapter work that slow, or is there another way to connect wirelessly?

[ozymango]

The laptop has just a single USB 1.1 connection. Would a wireless USB adapter work that slow, or is there another way to connect wirelessly?

It might work, but you can get any wireless PCMCIA card and it'll work in your computer. The slot in the Armada is Cardbus, so it'll run even the newest (32-bit) wireless cards; if you think you might run Windows 98 instead of 2K at any point, just make sure that the PCMCIA network card you get has drivers available for Windows 98.

[bevills1]

Just found Zonet PCMCIA 54 mbps adapter which has 5 star customer review rating for $5 after rebate at NewEgg, but shipping is $5 making total only $10 after rebate. Thanks again for all the very useful info.