Re: Unable to format hard disk


"Pat" <pkelecy(removethis)@insightbb.com> wrote in message
news:3OIif.584440$_o.522085@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Somebody gave me their old laptop (IBM ThinkPad T22) which wasn't booting.
> I tried reformatting the hard disk (after booting from a Windows XP Pro
> CD), and although it appeared to be reformatting, at the end of the
> process (which took almost 8 hours!) it came back saying it was "unable to
> format the selected partition...". Does this mean the HD is bad and needs
> to be replaced?
>
> Assuming so, how can I tell which hard drives will be compatible with this
> laptop? Although I've replaced desktop hard drives before, laptops are
> new territory for me. So thanks for any help with this. I appreciate it.
>
> Pat
>
>
The original HDD was a 20GB model with optional 32GB offered. You may want
to stick with this unless you know for certain the BIOS can handle a larger
drive. However, you may want to take a look on the Lenovo support site
before discounting the current drive as dead. Bios update 1.09 corrected
boot problems relating to partition information. This is from the readme
file for the latest bios update v1.12 "(Fix) Some hard disk drive (HDD)
partition information causes boot
failure."
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-4VWPPU


Also, you may wish to consider loading Win98 or W2K rather than XP. In its
basic form, the laptop is a 900MHz with 128MB (512 optional) ram. Given the
CPU, ram installed, and limited HDD size, WinXP will crawl. There won't be
a lot of room for apps and HDD space for virtual memory.


.

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