Storage Solutions Not able to format a brand new SATA HDD on Asrock Dual Sata2 939

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Quad Master

Herald
Hi guys

My uncle just rang me up today morning and told me that yesterday
when he was trying to format a new sata hdd he wasnt able to. :S

I donno whats exactly happening as i am not present at my uncles place.
The HDD is being detected [my assumption]

ne ideas on what might be wrong here.
 
What OS is your uncle using??
Is the SATA controller on the mobo enabled?
and under XP SP2...u need to initialize the hdd before being able to format it..
 
Count_Down said:
XP SP1 does not like drives more than 130 GB. What is the OS and what size is the HDD?
Click to expand...
I beg your pardon, I'm was using my 160GB Seagate with SP1 without any issues.

@ Quad - What's the exact error message ?

Try replacing the SATA cable, worked for me once..
 
Ask him to,
Right Click on My Computer >> Manage >> Disk Management

Choose the Hard Drive there, Right Click >> Format.
If its not initialised as yet. The Ask him Right click, and initialise it. I 4got what the command is actually called, sorry, right now, all my drives are initialised :P.
 
Oh Sorry! XP prior to SP1 has a problem.

"Windows XP manufactured prior to August 2002 has a native limitation of 137GB supporting ATA interface disc drives. In this configuration WinXP will not create partitions greater than 137GB until after the Service Pack 1 or higher is installed and registry bit EnableBigLBA is set to 1.

For the purposes of this discussion, both the original Parallel ATA (PATA) and the new Serial ATA (SATA) interface disc drives will have the same operating system requirements when attached to the motherboard and using the native Windows drivers.

As of January 2003, new copies of Windows XP Full Versions have incorporated 48-bit Addressing for ATA interface disc drives. You can confirm that your copy has this support by inspecting the installation CD artwork. It should say "Windows XP Home (or Professional) Edition Including Service Pack 1" or higher. "
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/137_winxp.html
 
Quad Master said:
Hi guys

My uncle just rang me up today morning and told me that yesterday
when he was trying to format a new sata hdd he wasnt able to. :S

I donno whats exactly happening as i am not present at my uncles place.
The HDD is being detected [my assumption]

ne ideas on what might be wrong here.
Click to expand...

Kindly provide full details for e.g. whether this is a new hdd on which XP is being installed.?? or is XP already on the system and this is additional drive.??

Also the brand and model no: of HDD and whether it is sata1 or sata2 drive etc ...??

whether ur uncle is using the normal SATA ports on the m/b or the SATA II port. ??

You should have got all this info. from ur uncle before posting the query here imho ...

(alas!!! The more things change the more they remain the same...:( )

anyways have a look here ...
http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/30/6147.html
 
Is your uncle using Fat32 with >32 GB of partition space ? if yes then try the following : He should either use NTFS or create smaller partitions each < 32GB.
Boot the computer with the XP CD in the drive and allow setup to begin. When you come to the screen where you select the drive partition you should see the drive listed with all the space listed as unpartitioned. If the drive was in use previously, you'll need to delete all the existing partitions. To do this you'll have to hit the 'D' key followed by the 'L' key. The screen instructions will be visible to guide the process.

Once all the existing partitions are deleted the display will show the total unpartitioned disk space.

Hit the 'C' key to create a partition. If you only want one partition then hit enter and the entire disk space will be allocated to the C Drive, but it will be NTFS, assuming the drive is 32GB or larger. However, if you want to create several FAT32 partitions then do not hit the Enter key. Instead, hit 'Backspace' until the cursor moves to the first digit. Enter the size of the first partition to be created.

Repeat the create partition process as many times as you want till all available space is allocated to partitions.
Once all the partitions have been created, use the 'Up' arrow key to select the C drive partition to install XP on and select to format it with FAT32 if you are sure that NTFS isn't a viable file system in your situation.

After XP has been installed and is running, navigate to Disk Management and format the other partitions with either FAT32 or NTFS. This step is necessary before the partitions will be available for use.
Click to expand...
Have posted this before ;) If this is not the problem then get back with more details.
 
i hope your uncle is not using WIN 98 .. i had read somewhere that win98 does not detect and work on SATA HDD's ... i am not really sure of this stuff though but i had read it for sure.
 
mohit said:
i hope your uncle is not using WIN 98 .. i had read somewhere that win98 does not detect and work on SATA HDD's ... i am not really sure of this stuff though but i had read it for sure.
Click to expand...

I heard that too, sata will not work in win98
 
Sandy said:
I heard that too, sata will not work in win98
Click to expand...
i formatted my sata drive from a win98 bootable disc....then i found the XP disc & installed Xp....so i find no reason for WIN98 not to work in win98:no:
 
Guys will give my uncle a call tomm and let you guys know the exact issue.

Just came back from classes at 10:30pm didnt get time to call my uncle and
ask if the issue is sorted or not.
 
Well this happened to me a few days back. I was tryin to install Win98 on my comp(SATA Drive). I have four partitions, i use C drive for the OS and rest of the stuff in other partitions. During install, Setup told me it needs to format C drive so i went ahead. It went ahead and formatted and started copying files. But when setting up non plug and play devices setup crashed, i tried it again and the same thing happened. So i started installing XP again. I found that Win98 had formatted the entire hard disk :S and there was just one partition C :@ Thankfully i was able to recover most of the lost data and the rest except for some stuff was backed up on dvd :D
 
see quad, thats what i meant - "if you had taken full details before posting the query."
already 14 postings have been made in reply to your query and now you mention, and members realise, that it is XP which ur Uncle is installing ...phew
 
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