unable to format 2nd sata as primary partition

Hi Guys/Gals

I recently bought a second sata ( samsung spinpoint 500GB ) drive to add to my system.

Windows is installed on the original SATA drive ( 250GB Maxtor )

When formatting samsung raw drive from Computer management console as a Primary Partion ( whole of the drive ) the format get to 100% and then gets stuck.

On reboot the drive shows as Z ( the letter I chose ) but with no NTFS next to the letter in Disk Management.

I tried uninstalling drive & restarting but same problem, as well as deleting drive from disc management & restart. I also tried quick format but to no avail.

I have now managed to format drive as extended partion and created logical drive in the whole partion but I am baffled as to why it wont format as a primary partition.

Motherboard is Gigabyte GA M57 S4 Sli rev 1.0
Bios F11
AMD 4200+ dual core
2GB patriot PC2-6400

 

Are you sure that it's actually 'stuck'? Try just leaving it alone for awhile and see if it finishes. Sometimes formatting via the Comp Mgmt console can take awhile to finish.

 

Hi

Thanks for your reply

I left computer on overnight ( 8 hours )

Think that should have been long enough !

Anyone else got any ideas ?

Incidentally I'm using xp sp2 ( I didn't put on original question )

Thanks

 

Have you tried letting it use the next logical drive letter first (E or F) then afterwords changing it to Z?