Trouble formatting a laptop hard drive.

  I'm having trouble formatting a laptop hard drive.
I have it in an external USB enclosure.
The formatting gets to a certain place and just stops.
I've left it running overnight... and the result is still the same.

The hard drive has a directory called 'System Information' (or
something like that).
I can't seem to delete that.

After the formatting fails... the directory is still there.
(When I say fails... I mean when I have to foreceably stop the
formatting... else it just sits there.)

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.


OM

 

WinXP, machine ?.
Rt\click My Computer\Properties\System Restore and turn off monitoring
to that Ext drive. HTH.
bw..OJ