New hard drive will not format?

[FragTek]

Hey guys, I am having a bit of a problem with my new hard drive. I bought a 250gb Deskstar for my rig and for some reason I can't successfully format it.

I am using Windows Server 2003 and the hard drive is IDE. Windows Computer Management shows the hard drive installed, I have assigned a drive letter and made the drive active. When I try and format the drive, it gives me an error at the very end of the format saying that the format was unsuccessful, both on a regular and quick format.

Am I missing something here?

Thx in advance.

 

[Rastalovich]

Definately try a dos based thing on it to see if it`s A-OK m8y.

Something as simple as dos->format will do.

Which rig u got this in, I`m thinking down a bios config route. Some x-business models require u to save the fact u`ve added a drive to the system b4 u can do anything with it, even in dos.

 

[FragTek]

I'll have a look, thx Rast.

 

[nathan]

if the dos format doesnt work, then it could be toast. You could try a low level format using the hdd manufacturers tools.

 

[FragTek]

Well I ended up getting it formatted, thought everything was all good. Transferred all of my music to the drive and then tried to re-add it all to my iTunes library. About half way through the process I get a windows error in the taskbar telling me that one of my files is corrupt on the drive, i'm like ok wtfo?

So I go and run a chkdsk and it comes up with a whole bunch of errors.... I schedule it for a fix on next reboot, reboot the computer, computer fixes errors, and now I'm back formatting again (this time in windows) as an extended partition. We'll see what happens this go around.

This drive is starting to

me off, I can say I've never had this much trouble with a drive before, specially a brand new one.

I'll have a look and see if Hitachi has any formatting tools available on their site for download. Thx guys.

 

[deathwish]

have you tryed formating it on an xp machine ?

 

[FragTek]

have you tryed formating it on an xp machine ?

No, what's the benefit of formatting it on an XP machine over a 2k3 machine which is far superior?

 

[deathwish]

just a sugestion

also if you get the same problems on another machine then you know its the disk

 

[Raging]

dont waste ur time anymore dude

its obviously borked off the manuf line imo

Raging.

 

[FragTek]

I'm starting to think the same thing. I have downloaded all of Hitachi's DOS bootable tools and running all of the diagnostics, cleaners, and format utilities on her now. If after all that the drive still feels like giving me

then I'll submit my RMA request. Stupid arse hard drives.

 

[llwyd]

I'm starting to think the same thing. I have downloaded all of Hitachi's DOS bootable tools and running all of the diagnostics, cleaners, and format utilities on her now. If after all that the drive still feels like giving me

then I'll submit my RMA request. Stupid arse hard drives.

To be honest, my faith in the ol' electronic / mechanical hybrid-ness of HDDs is waining these days. Looking forward to SS drives to be affordable

I would say just send it back. 99.9% of users wouldnt have the knowledge to go to the lengths you have to sort it. Just play dumb and send it back

 

[Rastalovich]

Agreed, if it effs after a simple dos format, there`s something afoot.

 

[FragTek]

I seem to have located the problem, for now....

After running the advanced configuration DOS utilities. I noticed that by default the drive is set to run at ATA133. I'm almost positive this system is only ATA66/100. I set the drive to ATA100, did a complete zero of the drive, once that completed I did a format in Windows and it completed successfully. I'm now transferring all of my music to the drive. Let's hope it works! I think it was just trying to operate faster than the computer was able to comprehend, thus the corruption problems. Fingers crossed that it keeps on working!

 

[Toxcity]

Well done frag!

Fingers crossed for you matey!