Cannot format new hard drive or install Vista Home Premium

S

svenyanckov

Member
Hi,

I recently bought a new hard drive (WD Caviar Green 2TB in system spec) due to a a failed Hitachi 1TB drive, and I have no other internal drive attached to my system.

I'm therefore trying to install a fresh copy of Vista Home Premium on the new drive, but I can't get this to work, and I cannot format the drive through the option on the Vista install CD.

I've searched through different forums and have found that the problem may be that the nVidia 570 chipset on my motherboard will not support hard drives >1.1TB. I've therefore tried to install the updated nVidia SATA drivers (through the Vista install CD driver function) but this hasn't worked.

I've also run the MiniTool Partition Wizard as a boot disk which recognises the drive, but when I try and format it, it runs the format, but labels it a "Bad Disk" and the format fails. I'd like to try and split the disk into 2x1TB partitions (so as to be under the 1.1TB), but it (understandably!) won't do this until I've formatted the disk itself.

The disk is recognised in the BIOS, by the Vista install CD and by the Partition software, all with the correct 2TB file size, so I don't think (!) there is a problem with the disk itself or the connections.

As I'm now struggling to come up with anything else to try, I wondered if anyone had any ideas?

Thanks,

Stuart
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ AM2 2.3GHZ
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 nForce 570 SLI ATX
    Memory
    6GB (Crucial DDR2) - 2x2GB, 2x1GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Sapphire Radeon X1550 512MB PCIE DVI-I
    Sound Card
    Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus VH192D LCD Monitor
    Hard Drives
    Western Digital 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s Caviar Green 64MB Cache WD20EARX (Internal)
    Buffalo Drivestation HD-HSU2 (External)
    PSU
    Colorsit 400W
    Case
    DabsValue Silver
    Cooling
    AMD Heatsink & fan, 1 fan in roof of case
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Wired 500 Lite
    Mouse
    Trust AMI 250S Optical

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo Thinkpad T400
    CPU
    Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53GHz
    Motherboard
    LENOVO 64734VM
    Memory
    2.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 531MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family
    Sound Card
    Conexant 20561 SmartAudio HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    15 inch
    Screen Resolution
    1280 x 800
    Hard Drives
    1x 180GB Intel 530 series SSD
    1 x 120GB Hitachi 5400rmp
    1 x 650GB Western Digital Elements 5400rpm
    1x 1Tb Western Digital Elements 5400rpm
    Internet Speed
    Medium for New Zealand
    Other Info
    Weakest part of my computer is the graphics chipset.
    Only ever used a laptop.
    Also use USB Freeview TV Card
    Lenovo Docking Station
    External Speakers
    Other bits a pieces as needed
I had a similar problem and was confused over how to format the drive. I gave a call to a computer service center in my city (Toronto) and they suggested formatting via disk management. But it failed. Finally they visited my house and checked the system. It was found that the problem was with virus. But thankfully, they resolved the problem and formatted. I was advised to keep a back up since i did not have it. I suggest calling a technician if you are not sure what to do. they know well about the things.
 

My Computer

System One

ilikefree and lakerjudy, thanks for replying.

I tried the Western Digital disk checking software on the first link from ilikefree and it said it was incompatible with my hard disk (despite the disk being listed as compatible). In looking closer at the WD website, though, I did find a jumper configuration document and a copy of the Acronis True Image software which was built for WD drives, and should do the same job as the MiniTool software already tried.

I changed the jumper settings to mimic a 300MB/s SATA connection rather than 600MB/s and re-ran the WD disk checking software. This time it recognised the drive, but came up with an error message saying it couldn't check it. By this time I'd smelt a rat, but I tried the Acronis software anyway (which worked better than either the Vista disk or MiniTool, because it successfully initialised the drive before telling me there was an error in one of the sectors).

I've therefore emailed WD to ask their advice, and will hopefully receive a new drive from them.

I've included all this just in case anyone stumbles across this post in the future with a similar problem. I'll update with the response from WD and mark as solved if I like the sound of it!

Thanks again ilikefree and lakerjudy.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ AM2 2.3GHZ
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 nForce 570 SLI ATX
    Memory
    6GB (Crucial DDR2) - 2x2GB, 2x1GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Sapphire Radeon X1550 512MB PCIE DVI-I
    Sound Card
    Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus VH192D LCD Monitor
    Hard Drives
    Western Digital 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s Caviar Green 64MB Cache WD20EARX (Internal)
    Buffalo Drivestation HD-HSU2 (External)
    PSU
    Colorsit 400W
    Case
    DabsValue Silver
    Cooling
    AMD Heatsink & fan, 1 fan in roof of case
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Wired 500 Lite
    Mouse
    Trust AMI 250S Optical
You may need to update the BIOS in your computer's CMOS. It's possible that there is a later version, and that the current one isn't capable of addressing a drive as large as 2Tb.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavillion dv5t
    CPU
    Intel Core Duo 2.53GHz
    Memory
    4Gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce 9600M GT 512Mb
    Screen Resolution
    1280x800 32bit
    Hard Drives
    Seagate Momentus XT 500Gb
    Hitachi Travelstar HTS543225L9A300 250Gb
    Mouse
    Microsoft 4000
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