New HDD problems

Well to start off I just bought a second hard drive. I've read through all of google and as many posts as I could possibly read before posting. Just bought a new WD Caviar 750gb. Running a 640 WD Caviar as my main drive. Bios detects drive on every sata port. Disk management will not detect the new drive. A couple of partition programs will detect the drive as unallocated. I try to create a new partition from the drive and every program just freezes while they try to create a new partition and format the drive. Some of the programs won't even start giving me some kind of error with a partition of the drive. I've ran a second HDD previously from an IDE cable without problems, formatting it from windows and all. I'd also like to note that windows takes about 5 minutes to load with the new drive plugged in. I'm not sure what else to even go about unless I am RMA'ing the drive.

 

A lot of the success and/or failure of a new HD to be seen, depends on the motherboard itself.
On many systems, a totally blank HD cannot be seen by Windows or any program run within windows.

I bypass all the above problems by connecting a new HD as the only drive in my system, and then I boot up with a CD containing my HD maintenance software.
Once the motherboard sees the drive, so will FDISK or Partition Magic 8, run from a DOS boot CD.

Then in DOS, I set up my standard TWO partitions and format each with DOS, to verify the integrity of each partition. I set the first partition to "Active".

Only after a new drive has passed the partition and format test, will I even think of using it, for whatever purpose.

I suspect that if you RMA that new drive, you're going to get another one that will do the same thing.
Know too, that if we're talking about a SATA2 drive, being installed on a SATA1 motherboard, there has to be a small jumper installed on the back of the drive, or the SATA1 motherboard will NEVER even see it.
I don't know if that's the case here, but I thought it a good time to mention this little problem. It bit me in the pants one day a few years ago and I'll certainly never forget it.

So, try to partition the new HD in DOS with a boot disk, before presenting it to Windows. I suspect that it will then work ok.

If you don't have the tools or expertise to do this, take it to someone who can.

Good Luck,
The Shadow :cool

 

Is the drive properly identified in the BIOS Setup Menu?

 

Good Question......
Because on older motherboards, hard drives are NOT automatically sensed and set up in the bios.

I'm currently working with a system that I built in 2000 and every time I install a new HD, I have to go into the bios and tell it to Auto Detect the HD.
It's kind of a pain in the pants, but that's the way all mobo's used to treat new drives.
Current mobo's will automatically detect a new drive during boot-up.
It definitely helps to know how your own motherboard treats new drives.
Even FDISK cannot see a hard drive if its not detected and set up in the bios.

Many versions of Windows however, will not show a hard drive unless it has at least one partition defined.

Cheers Mates!
The Shadow :cool

 

Yeah the hard drive was seen in the bios, in bootup, and even some programs would detect it unallocated in windows. All in all after making about 6 different boot cd's with no luck of even zero'ing it out, and after running countless programs after booting from dos the drive is faulty. It wouldn't let me even write to the drive to partition it. I also tried to install Windows xp, and Windows 7 Beta on it and it still wouldn't let me. For some reason it said that I would not be able to boot from the drive. And I tried writing a MBR and even tried repairing the MBR and at that point it wouldn't let me write to the drive. So It's being returned and another on has been ordered.