I'm need input. I have an Xe734 that wouldn't restore with the Recovery CDs, Norton2000 couldnt find anything wrong with the HD; but terminated because of a drive issue. I also tried FDISK and could never get through the "verifying drive integrity" routine. I pulled the drive, and with a USB to IDE LowLevelFormat Utility Formatted the drive. I did not create any partitions. I then put the HDD back into the PC intending to let the install Recovery CDs do whatever with the hard drive. But, you already know I have the same problem.....verifying drive integrity. Someone please tell me what is specific in the hardware that will not let me do this. Thanks.

You need to run a harddrive fitness test. That utility can be had from the manufacturer of your particular harddrive. You install the test to a floppy and run it from the floppy. If you low level formatted the entire harddrive you may have a problem re-installing using the restore disks, as they rely on data that was on a hidden second partition, which you may have erased.

It's a Maxtor FireBall Quantum 15 gig and it displayed 14.3 disk space at the end of the format routine. I thought that might a protected drive area; but not sure.

A 15GB drive dowsn't actually contain 15GB. Drive manufacturer's use 1000MB as the measure of a GB. There are actually 1024MB in a GB. Therefore the 14.3GB sounds like the entire harddrive. I may be wrong about the need of the hidden partition but many OEM computers that come with Windows pre-installed use a hidden partition. Run the drive fitness test. Find it below. http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm... You want this file: Maxtor PowerMax 4.23 Bootable CD .ISO image file. Or this one: Maxtor PowerMax v4.23 (07.27.2006

It passed the LowLevelForat without masking off any 'bad sectors' so I thought it should be a candidate for FDISK to initialize. I will try your suggestion asap. Right now I want to move it to another PC and see if a different OS shows the same status. I will follow up on this later....thanks Ej

Keep in mind that once you Low Level Format a hard drive it will be like a blank piece of paper, with nothing to read on it. Before you can use it you must partition and format it!!

I had already formatted with the USB/IDE adaptor. The roblem is when I put the drive back into the PC it isnt recognizd; not only that I cant get FDISK to allow me to assign a partion and make it active prior to an install. I just located an old 1.2 out of a Win95 PC and subbed it into the HP and booted it just fine. So I know there is something weird with the old drive; although it did completely format. I am about to wrap up; but I will format the 15gig on a different machine tomorrow.