SATA problem

I have two, as yet unused, 2 SATA (non raid)drives E&F(for video), plus 2 IDE drives. C drive has XP on. SATA drivers were loaded correctly.
Recently I have had odd things happen such as folders appearing on one that I have not put there, and reports from Norton disc doc that a drive is being used by the op sys when it is not. Occasionally the 2 drives not being recognised in the POST.
I tested at pcpitstop and it said one of them needed fragmenting when nothing was on it and it also had an uncached speed of only 1Mbs.
I have also been getting a popup message saying "Delayed write failed F:\$Mft, data will be lost". Haven't got a clue about that.

I thought I would reformat and see what happens, but I cant. I get the message to quit any disc utilities or other programmes using the drive, when nothing is.
I've disconnected, booted, shut down and reconnected and booted and have got rid of the odd files but still cannot reformat.
Device manager does not show a problem.

Anyone got any advice or ideas please?
Is this a software problem? They have only recently gone daft and were Ok when installed earlier this year.