My laptop was getting sluggish so I decided to nuke it using a Hiren CD and re-install windows from another disk. While doing so I saw that I had the option to re-format to NTFS after wiping it, so I did just that.
Due to my stupidity, I’d missed that I didn’t have the bloody thing plugged in, and the power promptly died during the formatting.

I’m pretty sure this has corrupted the hard drive as it’s now chock full of bad sectors.

Does anybody know a surefire way of getting the hard drive back to an empty and formattable state?
I can still get it to boot cds, it’s just that there are so many options from the BIOS tools on the Hiren CD that i’m struggling to find the correct one to rectify this. 🙁

Don’t worry about getting the drive back to any sort of a ‘state’, unless it’s physically damaged (doubt it) you can simply format it as part of Windows installation process, no need to use a separate boot CD for that. Simply pop in the Windows installation CD and it will offer to format the drive in one of installation steps.

Oh, and after you’ve installed Windows Ninite might be very handy to install most of the apps you need without fuss.

What he said.

It’s mangled the partition, shouldn’t be physically damaged. If you’ve got bad sectors, it’s probably coincidental. A full format (as opposed to a quick format) should test and mark bad sectors; if there’s a lot, replace the disk.

The Windows install will allow you to reformat the disk, don’t worry about third party tools. If you’re not using a manufacturer-specific recovery disc, install the chipset drivers before you do anything else after the build.

hmm… used the Windows boot disk to attempt the format in the first place.
Problem is that I now get through to the partition management screen and it throws a wobbly about the drive, I can’t even create partitions! then moving on to the format tool again it flat out refuses to do anything. eep..

Going to have another crack at it when I get home this evening. will report back then when I’ve actually got the bugger sat in front of me.

laptop was getting sluggish

corrupted the hard drive as it’s now chock full of bad sectors

it throws a wobbly about the drive, I can’t even create partitions!

Did you get any disk read/write errors with the original installation ?

It sounds to me as if your hard drive is ceasing to be, if it has not already ceased its being.

Buy a new drive and have the confidence that you are not setting up and working on a system that may well fail in the near future.