Hard Drive will not format. Please Help!!

**kgn** · October 28th, 2007, 11:13 AM

A little while ago my Western Digital (WD)EIDE 500gig hard drive failed on me. It was still under warranty so I called WD and setup an "Advanced RMA" which is when they send me a drive, when i receive it I send them my broken one. I recently received the new drive. Last night I tried to install the drive, with just one major problem stopping me. It wouldnt let me format the drive.

Everytime I try to format the drive with either Full or Quick format (this is what WD tells you to use, quick) my system locks up on me. The method i'm using is Right click on my computer > Manage > Disk Management.

I'm really not sure what to do here, please help. If you need any further information please ask.

OS: Vista Ultimate 32-bit
MB: ASUS A8V-Deluxe

Thanks!

**M_Six** · October 28th, 2007, 01:11 PM

Are you using the entire drive as one big partition?

**Bizkitkid2001** · October 28th, 2007, 02:08 PM

Have you tried running the Setup Utility from Western Digital's website? I think it is called Life Guard tools or similar.

**kgn** · October 30th, 2007, 07:42 AM

Originally Posted by M_Six

Are you using the entire drive as one big partition?

Yes, at the moment I am.

**kgn** · October 30th, 2007, 07:43 AM

Originally Posted by Bizkitkid2001

Have you tried running the Setup Utility from Western Digital's website? I think it is called Life Guard tools or similar.

Yes, and its not a setup utility, its a diagnostics utility, and does not support windows vista.

Supported Operating System:

* Windows 2000
* Windows XP
* Windows ME
* Windows 98SE
* Windows 98

Yet the package when I first got this drive said it supported windows vista.

**Foggy** · October 30th, 2007, 03:20 PM

May not help but you might hookup the new drive and disconnect the old drive, then use a 98 setup floppy to fdisk and setup a partition then install Vista and let it format the drive.
Make sure the HDD jumper is set to master or cable select, WD drives seem to like C/S

**nemowolf** · October 30th, 2007, 04:02 PM

Checking the jumper is something most people miss, ive done it plenty of times. WD by default i believe comes shipped in CS or Master. You may need to move this to Slave if its a secondary drive. (Guessing it is since your trying to mount and format it in an actual OS. You have mounted the drive to your system right?)

Despite being made for XP, it may run under Vista. Have you actually tried to run the program or decided that it was not going to work because Vista is not listed. I believe this creates a BOOTable CD/Floppy so operating system may not matter much other than creating the disc via the EXE.

Verify the drive is in proper working condition first before anything else. If you cant get it to run in Vista, ask a friend with XP to run the utility and create the disc for you. Visit a Best Buy and have the Geek Squad run a diag if you can spare time and they might do it for free if your nice about it. Either way, run that diag to make sure your didnt get a DOA drive.

If the Utility shows the drive to be good. Then you might have more of a problem then ... more info at that point would be needed.