Hard drive won't let me boot up

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Hi,
A while ago I was copying a couple of gigs worth of files (in windows xp) from my OS hard drive, to my storage hard drive, then half way through I cancled the copy. I was then given an error, which I forgoet. It was something like "Boot sector could not be written", or something. I'm not really sure.
I then tried to access my storage hard drive, and it displayed the same error.
So I figured I'd just run chkdisk, or whatever that function is in dos, and that would fix it.
So I got out my boot disk, but when it'd go to check the hard drives, it'd get stuck, constantly trying to read my secondary hard drive.

Now, I can't boot into windows, or anything, without it locking up. (I have to remove my hard drive to access windows)

Is there any way I can format my hard drive, without being able to get into the recovery console/windows?

Thanks in advance. =)
 
what file system are you using (NTFS or FAT32)? usually fat32 is far more susceptible to this issue that ntfs, but these things are possible (and may not be FS related for that matter).
Is there any way I can format my hard drive, without being able to get into the recovery console/windows?
boot to the windows xp cd and let setup initialize. after you agree the the license agreement (second screen), you should be prompted with an option once your existing windows installation is detected. it will allow you to repair the installation or continue. choose to continue and you will be given a partition table of all hard drives. you can now select and delete any partition you want. if you do delete your windows partition and proceed with setup, i reccoemsn you format the drive using the NTFS option and do not do a quick format. just let it take it's time...
 
I tried to boot from the windows cd, but it started checking the hard drive, and locked up.
For some reason I keep thinking of it as if you were trying to count how many characters were in a txt file, through a C program, but it never finds the EOF, so it just keeps looping.
I'm not sure what's actualy happening, but it just gives me the feeling that it's stuck in an infinite loop wihle trying to read my hard drive.
I doubt that elaborates the problem to you anymore, but meh...

Oh, and I'm using an ntfs file system.
 
you can download a utility program from your hard drive manufacturer. using that, format your drive.
 
I downloaded one of those utilities, but when I went to run it, it said something about it not working with my version of dos or something. (I got the windows xp one though...)

But anyway, once I booted up, it found my hard drive, and I was able to sucesfuly format it, however it says it can only hold 31GBs, rather than the full 160GBs.
Any ideas on why that might be?
 
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