XP Pro: A strange thing happened while I was reformatting...

[Steady Teddy]

I've just reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled XP Pro. My HD was already formatted in NTFS so I chose "Quick Format" .
But a problem occurred when it was formatting. The progress meter stayed at "20%" during the format process for over two hours! I figured that there could be one of two problems: Either my hard drive was going on the fritz or my XP Pro disc might have been damaged or dirty and the cd rom was unable to read it.
I ejected the XP disc while the format meter was still stuck at 20%. I used Data Dr. to clean the disc and then put it back into the cd rom. The progress meter still remained at 20% so I rebooted and started reformatting all over again.
It was at this point that has me a little concerned. When the format process began, the progress meter IMEDITELY shot up to 20% and then, a split second later, went to 100%.
I have windows installed now with all the drivers, AV, etc.
But I don't know why it only took a couple of seconds to format the hard drive the second time around.
Could it be because the hard drive was ALREADY completely reformatted the first time around but could not finish the process because there was one bit of information that could not be read off the disc before I cleaned it??
My question is: How can I make sure that my HD was formatted properly and there is no problem with XP?? If I was having a problem with windows, I would probaly be able to tell right away, wouldn't I??
My HD properties show 120 GB so I did not create a new partition.
I just want to make sure that everything if fine BEFORE I start reinstalling all my other programs.

Thanks in advance.

[glc]

Run IBM's Drive Fitness Test.

[ktkendall]

You can also run a windowsw chkdsk much like previous windows versions. MyComputer>Right click C:/ drive>Properties>tools>CheckNow>Check both boxxs(Automatically Fix & Scan for bad sectors) >Click start: It will tell you it can not preform the requested operation due to some windows files being in use or something like that, Would you like to rescedsule the disk scan for next time windows reboots, Click yes and reboot your PC. It does quite a thorough job and takes a while on your next reboot!