I recently got a new 250GB Seagate SATA internal hard drive to use as a secondary storage space. ok so this is the first SATA hdd ive ever tried to use, after eventually getting the right cables and starting up my pc i hit my first problem. I cant get it to format quick format gives me an error saying windows cannot format the drive and normal formating get to 99% before giving me a similar error. I decided to try use computer manager. I can create a partition fine but once again it wont let me format the drive without getting an error. I then tried to install windows xp on it to see if i could get windows to partition and format it.... Still nothing. Took the drive back to the store guessing that it must be faulty. They ran Seatools on it for me and said it was fine that my SATA data cable might be faulty. Rather than spend more money and time i figured that if it formats on another pc then i would be able to use it. I placed the hard drive in my second pc and lone behold it formats in there no problems what so ever. Right so i put it back in the original pc and it starts up fine and i even placed some stuff on it to see if it would keep the data, and it did. Im dual booting windows 7 build 7000(default) and windows xp home btw. Windows7 sees the new disk and installs some drivers (which should be the same as on the other pc if not newer) asks to restart my pc, i say yes starts up go to see the drive... D:/ is not accessible.... Take the hard drive out but it back in the other pc and its working perfectly again. I dont understand whats going on, as far as i can tell from my limited understanding the BIOS has SATA enabled. Its a VIA P4M890 motherboard with 2 SATA sockets Ive also tried using seagates diskwizard which just sits with the progress bar at the end while trying to format the hdd. Im putting it in the SATA1 slot in both pcs and it has the jumper still on the factory setting i havent changed it. Someone have any ideas whats going on? Perhaps the power supply? but all ive done is replace the 80GB IDE hdd with this new one and the old one worked fine. thanks, Regards Briaireous
The HDD sounds fine, have you considered updating the motherboard firmware? Is this the full error message you get, "D:/ is not accessible" ?
well not exactly, but i only get that error once its formated in another pc and taken to mine and then restarted... When i try reformat it on my pc i just get the error windows was unable to format the drive, and i cant understand why. Ill look into the motherboard firmware thanks
If you format the HDD in another PC, there some chance that its a permissions problem. I think you can see the HDD in the new PC after formating, right? if so try right click on the hard drive -> Properties ->Security tab -> click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab. In the Name list, click Administrator, or click the Administrators group, and then click OK.
im aving agro with sata drive aswell..some1 has suggested this to me...i havnt tried it yet...so perhaps its worth a go Your computer will not see the drive until you go into "Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management". Then follow the lead and initialise and format the drive. After you have done this then you should be able to go to "My computer" and see the new drive. once you can see the drive there then you can set up the raid. If you are trying to do it before you boot up windows, there should be a utility in the raid bios to format the drive.