A: drive mix up

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stephen A. Willhite
  • Start date Start date
S

Stephen A. Willhite

Running XP Home, SP 2. My A: drive suddenly tells me my disks need
formatting. I attempt to format, then it says it can't format. SO, I buy a
new A: drive. (Circuit City). They installed it. I get it home, same
thing. The light goes on at bootup, but I don't see on the screen that it's
been recognized. I highlight it in My Computer, and the busy light comes
on, but it insists perfectly good disks need formatting. Fortunately, I
have an identical machine here, and could format a disk on it. Brought it
to this machine, same thing. I also formatted one on a machine running ME.
Same thing.

It doesn't seem like a hardware problem. What else could it be?

Stephen
 
Stephen said:
Running XP Home, SP 2. My A: drive suddenly tells me my disks need
formatting. I attempt to format, then it says it can't format. SO, I buy a
new A: drive. (Circuit City). They installed it. I get it home, same
thing. The light goes on at bootup, but I don't see on the screen that it's
been recognized. I highlight it in My Computer, and the busy light comes
on, but it insists perfectly good disks need formatting. Fortunately, I
have an identical machine here, and could format a disk on it. Brought it
to this machine, same thing. I also formatted one on a machine running ME.
Same thing.

It doesn't seem like a hardware problem. What else could it be?

Stephen
Click to expand...

Why can't this be a hardware problem? The first thing to check
is the bios setup for the floppy disk drive. It should match the
type of FDD, i.e., typically a 3.5-inch HDD (1.4 MB) drive. The
next suspect area is the cable. For Drive A, the FDD needs to be
connected to the end of the ribbon cable. Swap floppy cables to
check the goodness of the present one. If problem persists, and
the FDD is known to be a good unit (and there are more defective
ones being sold these days, BTW), then the problem could be with
the controller. Somewhere along this troubleshooting path, the
problem should be resolved.
 
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