Vista - Vista formatting takes how long?

Just installed an eSATA drive and used vista for the formatting. Set the parameters and had lunch. Came back at after 55 minutes, it shows 8% format.

At this rate, it will take 12 hours for this 300gb drive. Partition Manager would do it in about 20 minutes. So, if this normal for vista?

No, That's longer than it should be.

Try a Reboot so Disk Management can get itself up to date on what you have done so far.

Hope it helps

SIW2

Thank you,
Rebooted and tried again. After 12 minutes it showed 2% formatted. At 50X, that is 600 minutes or 10 hours which is a slight improvement over 12 hours.

Rebooted again and used Partition Manager 9. I am NOT lying--it took less than one minute.

I really really really try hard to use the vista utilities where possible to avoid third party software conflicts. But some vista stuff doesn't work.

Hi Robertpri,

Sometimes Disk Management will appear to hang if it hasn't updated itself with the previous action - reboot cures that.

Doesn't seem to have in your case - did you try Quick Format ?

I use the Paragon Products myself - they're excellent.

There may be a problem with Disk Management - worth trying SFC command to see if that can help.

This will do it for you - just click Start system repair

http://www.vistax64.com/software-too...heck-tool.html

Hope it helps

SIW2

Yes, paragon stuff is pretty darn good. I would try sfc except for one thing: every time I have used it in the past on faithful XP Pro, it asks for a source disc to replace any bad files.

Since I have nothing but that godawful recovery thing, I have been told to not waste my time. The compressed recovery disk cannot be used for files, even extracting to sfc.

Is that correct? [don't recall where i read that]

big thanks!

Hi,

Yes, usually a "recovery" disc is an image - so you won't be able to get files off there.

If you need any, one of us will post a copy from our system in a zip file for you to d/l directly from the post.

You may be lucky - if you have a Dell disc , they are usually a modified M$ install disc ( rather than an image ), with a load of Dell junk added in.

SIW2

I am not sure what is on it [them, there's two] but I can attest that it takes about 3 full hours to recover. Done that twice already!

So, to avoid that, I'm using both Acronis backup AND Casper for a full, live backup to my eSATA drive. Bootable.

Never want to touch that recovery monster again.

Always a good idea. Bloatware is horrible.

When I get my new HDD I am planning on a full reinstall, and a separate partition on a separate HDD with my recovery settings on it for a quick recovery if the worst should happen.

~Lordbob

[quote=lordbob75;959889]Great idea. I copied C and D to F and G [my esata ext drive] so I have the same thing on two hd's. I can boot to either one [I hope, if BCD works]

If you make another install to another drive, what will be your method to boot to it? I am always looking for improved methods.

Hi robert,

If you use the copy ( not move ) partition function with Paragon , I believe it updates bcd for you , so you can boot straight into the new copy and the original.

Not sure what would happen if you cloned one drive to another - you'd have identical disk signatures. I think Vista will either complain , or change one - not tried it so I can't be sure.

Let me know what happens with that - will be interesting.

SIW2