Disk management unable to format drive in Windows Vista

[B_Hodge]

I had installed Windows Vista on my system. There was some problem with my hard drive, so in order to resolve the problem i tried to format my hard drive with the help of disk management. But while formatting my hard drive it showed me an error message stating that "Windows was unable to format the hard drive using disk management options." Can any body tell me that what can i do in order to get rid of the above issue? Any kind of help on the above issue would be appreciated.

[Hardwareman]

I think the drive you are trying to format contains system files of a Vista install on it. This might be one of the reasons, that won't let you to reformat your hard drive.

[Maxforu]

Did you tried to right click on your hard drive on the Disk Manager and then on the security tab, which will prompt you for the ownership or permissions for your account when trying to delete the file or formatting the hard drive on your system?

[Killen]

You need to just follow the below steps mention.

1. On the Disk Management window, you need to right-click the partition or logical drive that you want to format (or reformat), and then click Format.
2. Then on the Format dialog box, type a name for the volume on the Volume label box. This is an optional step.
3. Then you need to click on the file system that you want to use in the File system box. If you want, you can also change the disk allocation unit size, specify whether you want to perform a quick format, or enable file and folder compression on NTFS volumes.
4. Then just Click on OK tab.
5. After clicking on OK tab, you will be prompt to format the volume and the format process will begin on your pc.

Fore more information, you can check out the following link. Hope so it might help you to resolve the above issue.

[choop]

hi when i am trying to reformat, when i select the volume and right click.. "format" is greyed out and can't be selected, any pointers?

[ApPy10]

hi when i am trying to reformat, when i select the volume and right click.. "format" is greyed out and can't be selected, any pointers?

Which drive are you trying to format? Are you logged in as an administrator? And what type of volume does Disk Manager report it as? If it's not something Vista can handle, then you'd have to delete the volume and create a new one. Or maybe you could try to repair the Vista OS and then try to format the drive.