Sata drive formatting problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter cronoklee
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cronoklee

Hi I'm using an old Dell dimension 2300 as a fileserver and I've
recently bought a new 1.5TB sata hard drive for it along with a PCI
3port SATA adapter (the motherboard only has IDE ports by default).

Anyway, I've done the install and there are no problems with drivers
or anything and I can see the drive in Disk Managment.
However I cannot format the drive. When I try windows (XP) spits back
"the format did not complete successfully." with no explanation.

Anyone got any ideas why this might be happening??

Thanks,
Ciarán
 
Hi I'm using an old Dell dimension 2300 as a fileserver and I've
recently bought a new 1.5TB sata hard drive for it along with a PCI
3port SATA adapter (the motherboard only has IDE ports by default).

Anyway, I've done the install and there are no problems with drivers
or anything and I can see the drive in Disk Managment.
However I cannot format the drive. When I try windows (XP) spits back
"the format did not complete successfully." with no explanation.

Anyone got any ideas why this might be happening??

Thanks,
Ciarán

First thing that comes to mind is that you have XP service packs updated to
3. Second thing is if you created a new partition on the drive first and
then went to formating. Third is (if the previous thoughts aren't helpful)
that the drivemaker for your new disk may have a utility that will partition
the drive.
 
Hi I'm using an old Dell dimension 2300 as a fileserver and I've
recently bought a new 1.5TB sata hard drive for it along with a PCI
3port SATA adapter (the motherboard only has IDE ports by default).

Anyway, I've done the install and there are no problems with drivers
or anything and I can see the drive in Disk Managment.
However I cannot format the drive. When I try windows (XP) spits back
"the format did not complete successfully." with no explanation.

Anyone got any ideas why this might be happening??

Thanks,
Ciarán
Click to expand...

Not sure what's up with that -- you got yourself one of them new-
fangled drives with the new new industry FAT for Windows7? They
require backwardly compatible steps to run on XP.
 
Not sure what's up with that -- you got yourself one of them new-
fangled drives with the new new industry FAT for Windows7? They
require backwardly compatible steps to run on XP.
Click to expand...

Both XP and W7 use NTFS, don't they?
Do you have a link to read about that information?
 
cronoklee said:
I can see the drive in Disk Managment.
Click to expand...

What happens during the disk initialization phase?
However I cannot format the drive.
Click to expand...

You didn't give enough details starting with disk management
initialization sequence.
 
cronokleewrote:

What happens during the disk initialization phase?


You didn't give enough details starting with disk management
initialization sequence.
Click to expand...



Hi All, thanks for the replies on this. I'm still not sure what the
problem was but I've managed to get the drive formatted using This
partition manager:
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

It took about 1 mintue and did it first time. Now why couldn't windows
do that eh?

Thanks again for the prompt help!
Ciarán
 
Both XP and W7 use NTFS, don't they?
Do you have a link to read about that information?
Click to expand...

This stuff is different than XP. Look over on newegg at WD 1.5 or 2
-- lots of discussion. Do it 2 ways for XP, a jumper or their drive
software. W7 supports it out of the box
 
cronoklee said:
Hi All, thanks for the replies on this. I'm still not sure what the
problem was but I've managed to get the drive formatted using This
partition manager:
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

It took about 1 mintue and did it first time. Now why couldn't windows
do that eh?

Thanks again for the prompt help!
Ciarán
Click to expand...

Were you attempting to format FAT32 ?

If so, WinXP has a 32GB limit. But that isn't a technical limit,
it is political. With third party utilities, you could format
a 2TB disk to a single FAT32 partition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32#FAT32

This is what I use for FAT32.

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

For NTFS, Windows doesn't impose any artificial limits there.

*******

Another article you might read, is the one about the new
4KB sector hard drives. Apparently, all the drives, regardless
of size, will be using 4KB sectors, as there is an industry wide
agreement now to that effect. Western Digital is one of the first
to deliver these, and they say "Advanced Format" on the label on
the drive.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888

Paul
 
Were you attempting to format FAT32 ?

If so, WinXP has a 32GB limit. But that isn't a technical limit,
it is political. With third party utilities, you could format
a 2TB disk to a single FAT32 partition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32#FAT32

This is what I use for FAT32.

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

For NTFS, Windows doesn't impose any artificial limits there.

*******

Another article you might read, is the one about the new
4KB sector hard drives. Apparently, all the drives, regardless
of size, will be using 4KB sectors, as there is an industry wide
agreement now to that effect. Western Digital is one of the first
to deliver these, and they say "Advanced Format" on the label on
the drive.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888

Paul
Click to expand...

Hey Paul - do you know if you can still format these drives 64KB for video?
 
TVeblen said:
Hey Paul - do you know if you can still format these drives 64KB for video?
Click to expand...

The 4KB thing, refers to the size of the sectors on the disk. Your reference
to 64K, could be a cluster size, a stripe size or the like. And that aspect
should not be affected.

If anyone is interested in those 4KB sector drives, they should read some
review comments on Newegg first. I haven't been keeping careful notes,
but some users are having performance problems (and they didn't state
exactly what they were doing with them). For the moment, 4KB disks are
off my shopping list, until the smoke clears.

Paul
 
The 4KB thing, refers to the size of the sectors on the disk. Your
reference
to 64K, could be a cluster size, a stripe size or the like. And that aspect
should not be affected.

If anyone is interested in those 4KB sector drives, they should read some
review comments on Newegg first. I haven't been keeping careful notes,
but some users are having performance problems (and they didn't state
exactly what they were doing with them). For the moment, 4KB disks are
off my shopping list, until the smoke clears.

Paul
Click to expand...

The problem is compounded, it would seem, by the fact that they are also
making these as special purpose drives (from what I quickly gathered
this morning). They have a "Desktop" drive, a RAID drive, and a
VIDEO/MULTIMEDIA drive. Don't try and mix-and-match. How much fun are we
having now?
 
Jeez- you shut your eyes for a minute and everything changes....

This is a better read than the reviews:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-4k-sector,2554.html

Just another rule for builders to know!
Click to expand...

I read that one at the time, too. This morning however I caught one
in the business tech section -- saying by next year, 2011, it'll be
The Rule. Old FAT will obsolete, and everybody needs to start
"hoarding" smaller HDs for obfusicating things like DOS and Windows
XP.

What a load of crap. Haven't seen one yet, but I'd hope and expect a
new generation of PCI SATA controller cards for a stopgap, in case
someone wants to shell out a couple hundred dollars to the HD industry
-and- NOT have to buy Windows 7 in order to run their product.

Amazing the amount of money I lost when I first got into computing,
before the internet, actually -having to- listen to industry writers
jerking off.
 
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