i m trying to reformat a hardrive using an old case as a tester and ,the hardrive is an old one and i dont know whats on it, i get to bios screen, and have disabeled all but boot from cd, however it goes so far then screen either says files missing or it has stopped progress to save any damage to my pc, is there anything i can do to get it to load, cheers.

How is this hard drive installed? What CD are trying to boot to? Can you boot completely to the CD?

err, iv'e got a few harddrives im trying to formatt so i can put them in various cases, as im not sure whats on them im basically trying to do it from an old case, i got one to formatt but the others just go so far and either, stop because of missing files or because the system stops to prevent damage to my pc, dont know if there's a way to clean the harddrives without getting on the net ?, iv'e set the bios to boot from cd only?

Umm,

Originally Posted by Digerati

How is this hard drive installed? What CD are trying to boot to? Can you boot completely to the CD?

dont know if there's a way to clean the harddrives without getting on the net

There is, and I am trying to help you do that. But you're not answering the questions so I can figure out where to start. How are you installing (or attaching) these drive to your computer? What disk? Can you boot completely to it?

Are these drives older [E]IDE hard disks? (40 pin 80 conductor data cables.) If so, are the drive jumpers set correctly for thier relative position on the data cable?

I think that bill wants to know is what are you trying to use to reformat the drives? Are you trying to use a windows disk or is it a drive utility? What is on the CD? What blue screen are you getting? Do you get an error code?

sorry pal, im using a windows disc, as b4 im just getting to the point of windows loading, it either gets to about 20 mins then stops or it comes up files missing b4 it even starts to load, hope this helps, chris