[Coolyxxx]

I bought a new 500GB hard drive today. Running out of space. Anyway, I split it into 2 partitions, and it needs to format, but it's taking ages, at this rate, it could take 10 hours. Last time I formatted a drive it only took around 2 hours and it was like 70GB. Each partition is 250GB, so it should only take 6, 7, 8 hours? Plus this computer is faster than the one I did it on before, and it is SATA while the old one was IDE. It seems like eternity, 2 hours and only 25% which means about 62.5GB, is something wrong?

Edit: This is the only thing running besides music, so there is no other tasks slowing the process.

[thingie2]

Well the speed of the format depends on the size of the disk, which it seems like you allready know, but it sounds a bit slow, as I've formated a 120GB disk in within that time I think, but that was through the Windows install, so it might take a different amount of time than if you do it within windows itself. So overall, I think no, there isn't anything wrong, it's just taking a little while, which formats do, it shouldn't slow the rest of your computer down too much, so you should be able to go about your normal daily usage of your computer whilst it's formatting.

[Coolyxxx]

Ok, but it is slowing my computer a bit. I can't play games, because it lags me . All I can do is browse internets. Meh, I guess I can leave it on all night.

[thingie2]

Yea, probably best idea.

[mbonwick]

I believe there is a "Quick Format" option in the format wizard. I've no idea how it speeds the format up - but believe me it does.

Obviously it's a bit late now, just something to bear in mind for next time.

[thingie2]

Quick format speeds it up alot, but isn't a proper format, it is basicly just deleting every file (ie. it only deletes the file allocation table so it looks like there is nothing there), however the full format deletes all the data from the drive.

[Coolyxxx]

Ah, okay. I did the normal format. Anyway it's done now so I'm happy

[thingie2]

Ok, that's good, I feel as you don't format drives that oftern, you may as well get it done properly and do the full format

[mbonwick]

Yes, but it doesn't really matter if it is a brand new drive - it willl be blank anyway.

[Coolyxxx]

Yea, I guess it doesn't matter as much.