I am trying to do a fdisk and format on IBM thinkpad 600. I think the hard drive is going (computer has crashed 3 times in less than a month) but thought possibly we could reformat one more time...I have performed this procedure twice without any problems but now this is what's going on....
I have a Windows startup disk and successfully did the fdisk and proceeded to do the format...it formatted for over 24 hrs. and kept saying "trying to reallocate unit " and then numbers -that moved slowly....
I stopped it and decided to start over...did the fdisk and restarted the computer it said the partition wasn't created - which I know it was....I tried to go back to fdisk and it says error performing fixed disk - turned off and now it will not boot via the windows startup disk...I just keep getting error 174.
Do you have any advice??? Probably the hard drive is done??
Thanks in advance for any advice at all!!
Regards,
Georgia

Considering the reallocation errors, your drive might truly be pooched.
However, have a look through some of the following related discussions, as the error seems to be sort of common for that era of Thinkpad:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ad&btnG=Search

You have a bad hard drive. When you get "Trying to save allocation unit" errors, that means some sectors on your hard drive have gone bad. Replace the drive.