The message "Trying to recover allocation unit x" followed by format terminating
with the message "Format Terminated" is a BAD sign.

I had that happen with a Western Digital Caviar 1 GB hard disk drive.
In that case, the hard disk drive was failing.
It started happening on that hard disk drive at about cluster 7,765 thus
*ONLY* 238 MB of the hard disk drive was good! BAD!!!

With the above mentioned hard disk drive, I heard and saw all the major telltale
signs of hard disk drive failure:
When powering up hard disk drive, the hard disk drive will emit
"KA-TICK, KA-TICK, KA-TICK" also will emit "KA-TICK, KA-TICK, KA-TICK" when
attempting to send a write data command.

Any attempt wit
h the DOS format program at about cluster 7,765 would
result in "Attempting to recover allocation unit x" then "Format Terminated"
some seconds after.

Even SpinRite for that hard disk drive was NO HELP.
The hard disk would be emitting "KA-TICK, KA-TICK, KA-TICK" when using
SpinRite. SpinRite was not getting past that point of the beginning of
problem area. It was locking up.
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Format failing with "Trying to recover allocation unit x" then
"Format Terminated" telltales hard disk drive failure.

But before saying the hard disk drive is junk, check the BIOS settings.
You may be getting the above format error symptom, because the hard disk drive
BIOS parameters are not correct.


---Randy J. Anderson---

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