Formatting my C drive takes FOREVER!!!! 1

[Guest_imported]

Formatting my C drive takes 6 hours!

I have two physical Hard Drives - 30G (Master- "C&quot and 8G (Slave- "D&quot

Using Fdisk I deleted all partitions and created a primary dos partition on each drive (volume labels C and D) using up all available space.

It took almost 30 minutes for the disk integrity scan to run on the C drive. Only a few minutes on the D Drive.

While formatting (FAT32) the C drive, it is extremely slow! Almost 6 hours to complete the process. However, formatting the D drive took only a few minutes.

Does anyone have any idea what is wrong? Is my HD toast? Any advice/comments would be greatly appreciated.

Debbie
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Windows 98
Celeron 500
128MB RAM
30G Maxtor HD
8G HD

 

[cdogg]

What you have to understand here is density. The 8GB drive may run at slower RPM's (i.e. 5400RPM) and use ATA 33/66. The 30GB drive is probably 7200RPM and compatible with ATA 33/66/100. Even if your mobo is ATA 100 compatible, it will default to the speed of the slowest device on the IDE controller (meaning the 8GB drive). Even if both drives are running at the same speed, the 8GB drive has less arial density and can perform similar functions in a fraction of the time.

Solution? Only one I can think of is put the 8GB drive onto the same controller as your cd-rom drive. Leave the 30GB drive on it's own controller.

As a test, you can take the 8GB drive out of the system all together and see if the format time of the C: drive improves.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks for your advice cdogg. Gonna try and remove the 8G drive tonight and see if the speed improves

 

[osuman]

Just remember that if you leave it in that state the speed of the 8gig drive will be very slow. If you use it very much at all then you will want a different solution. CD-ROM type devices greatly slow a HD even if it is a 5400rpm with ATA/33.