Sounds like the HD might have some physical damage on
one of the platters... That is the only time I have seen that
message...

OTOH, I'd get ZAP or WIPE from IBM and erase at least the
first section of the drive. (Or get the utilities for testing the drive
from the drive manufacturer.)

After I was sure the drive was, or at least appeared to most
or all utilities) to be empty, I'd do the FDisk and a LONG format.

Since the drive is "suspect" don't even try a quick format (such
as with EZDrive or MaxBlast, etc.

That is the only thing (cheap) that will tell the real condition of a
drive "up front" and with a minimum of effort...

                                       Rick Glazier

From: <[log in to unmask]>

> This is a new one for me.  I have a KT 133/E/A K7 Chipset with AMD Duron
> 750Mhz and 512 RAM and 30Gig HD.  I received the box with the HD already wiped
> clean.  Fdisk showed no partitions.  When I first started it up I entered BIOS to
> double check settings.  All appeared ok.  I began installing Win98se.  It
> said it wasn't eligible for a quick  format and asked if I wanted an
> unconditional format.  I said ok.  It hung on "trying to reclaim cluster" number such and
> such.  It stayed there about 45 minutes.  I restarted.  Checked fdisk which
> showed one active partition 30gig fat32.  Tried to install Win98 and setup
> stopped saying I needed more space to install the OS.  I don't know what was on the
> HD prior to me getting it.  Could it be it had NTFS or HPFS on it and I can't
> format using Win98 startup disk?  How would I go about formatting HD?

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