Problems with SATA 160 GB HD

[serg]

Hello,

I am running Win. 2000 and I have three hard drives on my computer two of them are IDE and one is SATA, I am using my SATA HD only for storage and I don't have any system files on it, it was running perfectly until a few days ago I had three partions on it and I had about 56GBs unpartioned space left and a few days ago I tried partitioning it and when I was formating it, it gave out an error, it said that format was not complete, i just ignored it and tried to format it again , then it was working fine I even managed to transfer some of the files into the new partion. After that I shut down the computer and in the morning when I turned it on it gave the blue screen... Which didn't really say much at all except that I need to check all my hardware and try loging in using safe mode and it gave me two numbers of the errors which I was stupid enough to not write down. Anyway after that I tried a few things and in the end I disabled the SATA drive from Bios and I could log into Windows without any problems but I didn't have my SATA drive available obviously... so after that I upgraded my Bios I downloaded the latest drivers for my SATA HD and tried enabling the SATA drive from bios again... this time it didn't give me a blue screen or anything else and it actually loged into windows but 3 seconds after I got loged on, the computer booted itself up.... and now it keeps doing that as long as the SATA drive is enabled in BIOS.... I am pretty lost here I have a few ideas that I am gonna try but by now I am starting to run out of possibilities, please if you think you know how to fix this problem reply to this message, I will keep you posted and I will let you know if I fix this ahead of time...

Thanx, I hope you had patience enought to read through all this....

[glc]

What brand is the SATA drive? Download the diagnostics from the hard drive manufacturer - the version that makes a boot floppy, and run diagnostics on the drive.

I'm assuming that you have a 48 bit LBA-compatible bios, and you have Win2000 service pack 4, and the latest SATA controller drivers for your motherboard.

[serg]

The SATA drive I have is a MAXTOR 6Y160MO is the model name, thanx for the advice, I'll try to find the diagnostics on the maxtor site and run it, I'll let you know how it goes...

I do have Win2000 service pack 4, and the latest SATA controller drivers for the motherboard. I am not sure what 48 bit LBA-compatible bios is, is it the part of the bios that breaks the 137 GB barrier, if it is then I have that installed and I also just upgraded my bios to the latest version available for my motherboard, so I hope I have that part covered...

[glc]

48 bit LBA is >137gb support, yes.

The diag you want is Powermax.

[serg]

Thanx for your help, I booted up using the Powermax Diagnostics Program like you told me, after going through the advanced error checking, it found an error and fixed it, it mentioned that after fixing that error all the data could get lost but everything is in place, so its all good... Thanx again...