Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[REDLINE]

hello.  First I'd just like to say that I've done this procedure many times over the years.  It is my standard practice to annually format my harddrive after backing up files I don't want to lose and then re-installing my OS as a form of maintenance.  I've done this for the last 12 years.  This particular HDD, I've had it for nearly 4 years and had no problems - even up until last week when I formatted the drive.  It was fine until that moment. I'd also like to add that I searched the forums and while I found similiar issues with other HDDs, I didn't find any solutions that helped me any.

I formatted the drive with the XP install disk, and when it rebooted to load off the drive to continue the install, I got disk read errors.  I finally installed the OS on a really old 12 GB HDD just to get the computer to run so I could try to figure out what the heck was wrong with things.  I've never had any troubles doing this procedure in the past.  I downloaded Seatools, and I've run all the basic tests.  They all came up with a green "pass".  I've formatted the drive several times now.  First, the quick format on the initial OS install attempt, then a full format.  Then I tried to use Partition Magic, but it failed to format the drive and gave no clue as to why. 

After installing XP on the old drive, I updated it to SP2 and tried to format the drive again, and it showed the proper capacity and drive letter and volume name- it even let me copy files onto it and everything!  Yet after rebooting, it reverted back to saying it was not formatted, and wouldn't show me the capacity anymore (0).  My BIOS clearly shows the drive and proper capacity though. I have an ASUS a8n-vm csm MOBO, so I went to their site to look for drivers.  I updated those they had, but they didn't have any new drivers for my SATA controller (not that I've ever had any issues with this procedure before).

I'm quite frustrated and am at a loss at what else could be the problem. Any thoughts or suggestions?

[everrest]

Try using Seagate's Discwizard to format and copy the installed O/S from the small HD to the drive having problems.

[REDLINE]

It won't let me.  The drive that I actually got to let me install XP on is an EIDE drive, while the drive in question is a SATA drive, and won't even show up on the list in the Disk Wizard program.

[graham.k]

Can you try temporarily attaching it to another PC, and testing it with SeaTools for DOS there?

[REDLINE]

yeah, I can do that, but I'm not sure when.  I work 2 jobs, one of which is currently instituting mandatory overtime, so the next time I'll be able to go to my brother's apt to try this would also have to match a time that he's available.   Such a PITA!

[everrest]

On my old Asus A7n8x with SATA you need to install the SATA drives when you install Window.  You will need to copy the SATA drive to a 3.5" disk  or maybe the IDE drive.  When you install XP it will look at your system.  If you look at the bottom of the screen you will see an option to HIT F6 to install 3rd party drives. This is where you will install the SATA drive.  You may need to get the drive from ASUS or the chip maker. I only had to do this once in my life, hope it helps.

[REDLINE]

I don't have a floppy disk drive.  I've not had one for 7 years.  I didn't have to do that for either of my previous re-installs to get things to work properly.  I did look to see if they simply had an updated driver for the controllers in the MOBO thinking that maybe that could be an issue, but the only thing close to such a thing was their make disk utility which I would assume is what you're talking about. 

[Cantbecanit]

You do delete the old partition and set a new one before loading the new O/S don't you?

Regarding needing a sata driver I think the best option is going to be a USB floppy drive, or borrow one from another machine and temp hook it up, you can make an XP disc that gets round the A\: drive only issue, but it's quite in depth and not guaranteed to work either, your MB will have an ide cable slot for a floppy, I always pinch the one out of my kids PC when I need one.