Having problem formatting 2nd HD

[zincter]

I'm having a problem formatting a second hard drive that I installed into my computer. It is a Seagate Barracuda 160GB (My master drive is a Seagate Barracuda 80GB). When I use WinXP's disk management, I get the following error when the formatting should be 100% : "The format failed to complete successfully". Similarly, when I try to use PartitionMagic 8.0, there is a Windows OS error at the end of the attempted format. Device manager says that the device is working properly, and I can see it in My Computer, leading me to believe that I partitioned it properly. It just won't let me format it. Any ideas?

Thanks

[DragonNOA1]

Have you put any data on the HD yet? Can you save and open normally? Maybe everything is OK since your computer says it's working correctly.

Run ScanDisk on the drive just to be sure.

[zincter]

No, can't write to it, When I try to, I gat a message telling me that it is not formatted and asking me if I want to format it now, which leads me back to the first problem of not completing the format.

[glc]

Do you have SP1 installed for XP? Is all 160 gigs seen in disk management or does it think its a 128 gig drive? Are you using 80 wire cables and cable select jumpering?

[zincter]

Yes I have XP SP1 (and all other updates are current). When I look at the drive from disk management, it sees 149.05 GB, I don't know if this is normal or not as this is my first install of a 2nd HD. I am using the 80 wire cable with the black connector to the master drive and the gray connector to the slave. Currently I have the jumper of new drive configured as slave. Should I change that to cable select? Also, Seagate has a utility that configures the drive for Ultra ATA100 (which I want), but I haven't run it yet. I wasn't sure if I needed to.

[zincter]

I've configured both drives as cable select, Bios sees 160GB, but disk manager still sees only 149.05GB (unallocated, because I removed the partition), is this normal? when I partition it, it shows as "healthy", but still only 149.05GB.

[DragonNOA1]

I would say it's good b/c my 120GB drive shows up as 111.7GB in diskk managment.

[glc]

Yes, 149 or so is correct for a 160.

[zincter]

I just tried to repair my windows xp from the startup disk in case that had something to do with it, but when it asked me for my administrators password I didn't recall ever setting one up. I don't have one for my windows logon, as I'm the only one using this pc. Is there a default admin password for installation/repair? I', a bit nervous about going further though, as I'd hate to bugger up my master drive which is working fine. If repair doesn't help, I thought I'd try to partition and format the drive from the install disk. Any thoughts on this?

[Beatdis]

I think its just asks you for a password in case you had put one in, just click next and everything should be fine.
I had a problem with my 160 gig drive only showing as 149 gig ? so i installed sp1 and it shows just over 150 gig.
In bios it shows the drive as 163 gig, but some motherboards wont go over a certain size without sp1 installed.
My local pc shop said its showing the correct size and it has xp installed and the sp1 thats why so much space has been used up.
If the sizes wasant tallying up properly ? then the computer wouldant be able to format the drive properly.
But some drive makers have little software utilities to format their drives becouse of these problems, then xp should install ok.
Darren

[zincter]

I finally figured out my problem, so I thought that it would be a good idea to share the solution here. I was pulling my hair out over not being able to format this second hard drive. I contacted Seagate, I ran their diagnostics, I updated my BIOS, all to no avail. then I ran across a posting in another forum that said a guy was getting a similar message http://www.rtx100.com/forums/read.cgi?3859 . It turns out that I needed to update Intel's Application Accellerator to the latest version. That was it....halleluja!

Thanks everyone for your assistance.