Techsurvivors
Archives => 2003 => Topic started by: Himrich on February 01, 2003, 03:35:00 PM
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Does anyone know how long it will take to reformat a 60 GB hard drive with zeros? I probably shouldn't have chosen such a low level format but did not expect it to take hours.
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I recently zeroed my 80 gig Maxtor. I started at around 9 p.m. and it finished up sometime around 11 a.m. the next day. Long time. I don't really think you have to zero the drive unless you're sending it for replacement, or where someone else is getting it.
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I know now.
It was a big mistake but I had thought it would only take an hour or so, not half a day. The problem is you don't dare stop it while in progress or the dirve will become unusable.
Oh well, live and learn. I have some good movies I can watch to keep me company this afternoon.
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So how are you posting this? Telepathically?
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My guess is it should take about 40 minutes or so. It takes a while anyway. I did write zero's on the loaner machine I had while my Powerbook was in for repair and it has a 30 GB harddrive, that took about 20 min.
/Petra
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Good catch Kelly.
I just happen to have a PC in the house too. My wife's, it works in pinches like this.
Not yet Petra.
It is now 4 hours and counting. According to the earlier post I could be looking at about midnight. I started it at 1 pm.
Oh hum. The wife and I just finished watchng "Singin' in the Rain." Guess we will have to pull a few more movies out before I can get back to my work.
P.S. Is it just me or does it seem like Techsurvivors is slowing down a lot? It seems like it use to be a lot more peppy. Now it can take a screen 15-30 seconds to redraw. And I have a cable modem.
[ 02-01-2003, 08:17 PM: Message edited by: Himrich ]
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quote:
Originally posted by Himrich:
P.S. Is it just me or does it seem like Techsurvivors is slowing down a lot?.
We're working on it.....
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...and I trust you are. Thanks for your continued effort.
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OK folks, now I am getting REAL concerned.
It has been 19 hours on my 60 gig drive and it is still isn't done. In fact, other than the constant moving barber pole and the hard drive motor purring, I don't really hear any activity in the drive.
What do I do now? Something seems wrong about this all.
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It does appear to be taking an exceedingly long time, however, I did this on a 20G hard drive recently and it took 5hrs of so. I'd let it continue for a while longer. What's the progress indicator showing?
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Therein lies the $60,000 question. Why isn't there a progress bar? There is only a continuing barber pole.
Does that spell trouble?
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Rick. How are you doing this? From a Jaguar Install CD or what?
I haven't found anything specific on how long it should take but that seems a long time.
Only reference I could find says to unplug everything that isn't stock to the machine.
I guess give it a little more time and then stop it.
I don't know that that would damage the drive.
You could probably just redo it.
Is this a new machine? New Drive? What?
Not very helpfull.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=21103
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Sorry, I misunderstood your "barber pole" reference to mean the progress bar. My appologies, I understand what you meant now.
It appears that there is a problem. Is there any message in the window? I'm reluctant to just tell you to shut it down until someone with definitive knowledge pops in, but unless there's a Cancel button in the window, that may be the only solution.
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You are absolutely right Kelly, I didn't give much info in my original post, did I?
The drive I am attempting to reformat is an external QPS Que!M3 60 GB firewire drive. I am running Disk Utility from my G3 Powerbook running Jaguar 10.2.3.
I have had the energy saver functions turned off thru yesterday and last night, but I forgot to turn off the screen effects. Could that have affected the time?
What troubles me is I don't hear what I think I should be hearing. You know, the disk access sounds of something writing to disk.
Does this help?
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There is no message per se. Just a window with the words "Formatting with zeros" on top of a barber pole.
No buttons at all.
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That sounds very weird... I sure hope the disk is done by now. If worse comes to worse you might have to force a quit on the Disk Utility and see if you can use another tool.
Petra
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Hi Petra,
Do you think there is any danger in totally messing up the hard drive by doing a force quit? I would have already done that or at worst just turned the external drive off but I was afraid I would never be able to use the drive again.
Rick
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I don't want to get off the topic for long but if any administrator is monitoring this thread I was wondering how tough it would be to add a member's number right behind the Hello, <user name> at the top of the page. In my case for instance it would appear as Hello, Himrich, #317. The only reason I suggest this is for the times I come back after being gone for a month and want to search for one of my old threads and forgot my number. I call it selective memory, my wife thinks I'm beginning to lose it.
Rick
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Rick. Just go to your Profile to find that info.
"My Profile" should be at the top of the page.
Back to your problem.
External Firewire is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
Get back to you.
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I know Kelly but that requires loading 2 more pages to get to the info. I just thought, without too much trouble, it could be added after the user name for one stop shopping.
Rick
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It's now been 23 hours and unless someone has any more ideas, I think it is time to make a move.
I'm going to give it another half hour and then I'm going to try the following:
1) Force quit Disk Utility (to see if it is the culprit. Maybe it never even got started with the process. Like I said in an earlier post, I hear no disk activity.)
2) If that doesn't work, do a reboot of the system and see if the drive reappears.
3) After that, I sill just recycle the drive off and back on.
4) If that all fails check it thru Disk Utility to see if it will appear.
5) Give up and cry.
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Well Rick. Jennie would have to answer you on that.
I'm finding some not so very good remarks about that Drive.
http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/sear...h.drivedb.lasso
At this point I would turn it off and try again.
If it never does work I'd return it.
But that's me.
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Thanks Kelly.
Well, I think I just wasted 23 1/2 hours of my life for nothing.
1) I forced quit out of Disk Utility.
2) Turned the drive off and on again.
3) Got a msg that it was not recognizeable and would require intialization.
4) Okayed that and Disk Utility started.
5) Chose Erase and all is well.
Except those reports on this drive sure are troubling. I'm going to try to complete my project with it since time is of the essence but maybe I should get rid of it. I wonder if they will take it back after 11 months?
Rick