Froze during Format

[KP84]

Ive got a Compaq Laptop. Its a old P2 600mhz with a 10gb Hard drive. I had to format C: (Windows wouldnt load) using a bootable partition magic. After 3 hours it got stuck at 55% format. Its still running for 5 hours now but its froze. So this means the hard drive is currupt right?? or could I turn off the laptop and reformat it?

Thanks

[Enverex]

Just restart and try again, but it may be hitting a serious amount of bad sectors (or may have just crashed as you said).

[KP84]

Ok, Thanks ill try it

[muddocktor]

Yeah, sounds like you have a failing hard drive. But try formatting again, like Enervex said.

[Leonardo]

I bet your hard drive is overheating. Most laptops are not designed for continuous high stress on the CPU and/or hard drive. If you have a hard drive bay latch that you can open, do so. (Just ensure to put something small under the exposed hard drive so that it doesn't fall out onto your desk when you run the computer.) Also elevate the laptop a little above its resting surface so that air can circulate. If that doesn't solve the problem, you may have a failing hard drive. The good news is that you could double, even quadruple your hard drive volume with a new unit for very little money if you indeed need to replace that drive.

[KP84]

Yeh, its a currupt hard drive, its actually a friends laptop, I did a format again with MS-Dos and its found a lot of bad sectors it keeps "trying to recover allocation unit" and its been goin through a lot of them. We might just buy a 20 or 40gb for it.