"Lindstrom, Rick" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi- > > How long does it take to format a hard drive of, say, 1.2 gig once you have > activated Format? > > I'm asking because I'm doing a reinstall for a friend that involves a > reformat, and it looked like it might take over an hour once it got > started. Is this normal? I left and told her to call me when it was complete. > > The format process gave the message- > > "Trying to recover allocation unit xxxx.xx" > This means that there are sector errors on the disk. > alternating with- > > "XX % complete > > I guess it's obvious that I've never done this before, right? When it has to process "around" bad sectors, it takes a much longer time to format. Normally a 1.2Gb disk should high level format in just a few minutes. -- Russ Poffenberger Engineering Specialist Schlumberger Technologies ATE DOMAIN: [log in to unmask] 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 72401,276 San Jose, Ca. 95110 Voice: (408)437-5254 FAX: (408)437-5246