formatting my hard drive

I am trying to format my c drive and I have a boot disk that boots me to dos then I enter "format c:/q" and it says invalid drive specified. What is going on ? C is my hard drive. How do I fix this?

Thanks

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Comments

TeKniques

Here are some instructions to help you through this.

Good luck!

skives

I have followed all those steps before and I can't get my hard drive formatted

TeKniques

Okay ....

Have you tried a bootable CD?
What do you see when you go into FDisk?
Does the BIOS detect the HD?

You'll have to be more specific as to exactly what you have done and checked already.

Also, have you considered that the HD is just gone bad? That happens from time to time as well.

Ricka182

Try not using a switch like /q......

sprkymrk

skives wrote:

I am trying to format my c drive and I have a boot disk that boots me to dos then I enter "format c:/q" and it says invalid drive specified. What is going on ? C is my hard drive. How do I fix this?

Thanks

Make sure you have a space between the command and switch. Like this:
"format c: /q"

paige1

What Operating System are you using?

You may want to try here for some info

http://www.sightsea.com/pghpchd/pages/formatC.html

Hope this helps

Plantwiz

Are you typing the "quotes" or not?

Format C:

or

"Format C:"

I guess I"m not ceratin how a format won't work, so could you describe your process for formating the drive?

-Describe the boot disk you are using (and if the FORMAT Command is listed in the Directory).
-Are you formating a new drive or one with data?
-Did you FDISK before formatting?
-OS
-As asked above, from FDD, CD, etc..
-How is your Hardware configured? Is your HDD set to Master? Or Slave? On the Primary Channel or Secondary (if IDE HDD) or are you using a SCSI or SATA drive?
-Is your HDD recognized in the BIOs?
-Is your FDD/CD recognized in the BIOs and are they as well as the HDD set in the boot order?
-What is your boot order?
-Does everything have power to it?

I have some other questions of things that have prevented people from setting up a HDD, but the problems I've seen have been resolved by correcting the hardware configuration. And once or twice someone didn't type the commands correctly.