Adding a SATA hard-drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Philip Andrews
  • Start date Start date
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Philip Andrews

Hello,

Can anyone tell me where I'm going wrong, please? I'm trying to add a
300 GB SATA HDD to an XP Pro unit which already contains three IDE HDDs.
I've tried every way I can find to create and format any sort of partition
on this drive - and all methods have failed ('all' being DISKPART, Computer
Management in 'Control Panel ... Administrative Tools', Partition Magic 7
and Windows Explorer - where sometimes the drive appears, then it doesn't,
then it does again. All I get at the end of an attempt to format the drive
(by any method) is 'format unsuccessful' or words to that effect. SATA is
enabled in BIOS, and is set to IDE rather than RAID ... all I want to do is
to use the drive as a large scratchpad for video projects, formatted under
NTFS.

Any light that anyone can shed would be most welcome - I'm stuck, and
have been for a week.

Cheers,

Philip
 
Usually in the BIOS you'd set to "enhanced mode or combined mode" in
advanced chip set-integrated peripherals,or similiar.Also,many times,one
needs to download the mfg DOS utility from the hd mfg,then run the burn-in
utility(s),or format the hd,this gets some data on the drive so xp
recognizes it.
Also,download the SATA and chip set utilitys for the board from the mfg who
made them,intel,etc..
 
Hi Andrew,

Usually in the BIOS you'd set to "enhanced mode or combined mode" in
advanced chip set-integrated peripherals,or similiar.
Click to expand...

I didn't spot anything there - it's an Award BIOS, btw - but I *did*
spot that the drive detection was set to 'auto' rather than 'Large'.
Also,many times,one
needs to download the mfg DOS utility from the hd mfg,then run the burn-in
utility(s),or format the hd,this gets some data on the drive so xp
recognizes it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help.

Formatting the HDD is the sticking-point - I can see it in 'My Computer'
(all the time, now that I've fixed the BIOS a bit better), but formatting
attempts always end in 'format was unsuccessful' OWTTE.
Also,download the SATA and chip set utilitys for the board from the mfg
who
made them,intel,etc..
Click to expand...

Yes - I found that the installation disk didn't match the motherboard,
so I went to the FoxconnChannel site anf downloaded the latest offerings.

One more question - I've taken it for granted that a SATA drive can be
formatted and used on its own, rather than as part of a RAID or JBOD set -
but is that actually correct? I can't see why not - but then, I'm a newbie
with SATA, so I could be wrong about that as well.


Cheers,

Philip


 
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