Unable to format 200gb drive under XP

Wicked-Xr · January 7th, 2006, 06:14 PM

I have been trying to install a 200gb seagate hard drive for about 1 week now but i keep getting "windows is unable to format the drive".

Ive updated Bios (ASUS), checked ATAPI.SYS (2180),SP1, SP2, run seatools, even had a friend format it on his PC running XP. (At least i dont get a message that says i need to format the drive). But when i try to save more then 120gb+ to it, it hangs....so xp still doesnt see more then 137GB. This drive is an additional drive.

Ive split the drive 100/100, it formats the first partition, but wont do the second.

Has anyone come across anything similar?

Bill

DanU · January 8th, 2006, 02:07 AM

What motherboard do you have? This will happen if your motherboard doesn't support 48 bit LBA. You'll need to either get a separate IDE controller card with 48 bit LBA support, or use seagate's Drive Overlay software to break the 137GB barrier. You should be able to download the drive overlay software from seagate's web page.

Wicked-Xr · January 8th, 2006, 02:40 AM

Hi Dan,

The mobo is an asus P4B533-E, with updated bios, the mobo sees the 200gb drive ok, LBA is enabled, windows sees it as a 186gb (200gb) which is correct, but the issue is only when i goto FORMAT the drive......i have tried to format the drive with external tools, it formats it to 200gb ok, but when i click on it in windows it asks me do i want to format the drive, i say ok, and it will come back as unable to format the drive. I had a friend do it useing his xp, and he didnt have a problem, i then fitted the drive into my pc, and it doesnt ask to format the drive, but when i exceed ~130gb it locks the machine up.....

cmptrgydv · January 8th, 2006, 03:04 AM

try and partition the drive, and see if it will format, (make it 2 partitions)

Wicked-Xr · January 8th, 2006, 04:15 AM

Ive done that as well, made them 2 x 100gb, it does the first partition ok, but when it is formatting the second partition it come back with "unable to format"....

PC TECH250 · January 8th, 2006, 05:14 AM

If Seagate offers a FAT32 utility similar to Western Digital's "DRFAT32" bios bypass overlay,
you may have to install an older 98-ME OS to have XP then perform a deletion, repartition,
and reformat where it then detects a new "RAW" partition available. XP should then install
without issues. You would perform this by upgrading through Windows as well as changing
from Fat32 to NTFS on the single primary. That was done easy enough with a 250gb drive
used as an XP single primary at this end. In the bios you would set the auto not lba mode.

Wicked-Xr · January 8th, 2006, 06:05 AM

Hi Pctech,

Too hard, and it is suppose to work directly under xp......i dont want to have issues later on when i upgrade and xp decides to remove the overlay.....and what happens on the next drive that i get that is larger then 137GB?.....i thought there maybe something that i have missed or a file that has been corrupted in xp..... maybe the registery doesnt see the correct version of atapi?.....the bios is ok, there are no issues there that i can see, its something inside windows xp itself, i may have to reinstall xp from scratch.... also, this is an extra drive, not the one with the OS on it....ive removed an old 80gb that i had as primary on the secondary and want to replace it with 200gb....

PC TECH250 · January 8th, 2006, 04:39 PM

XP has been reinstalled a 250gb drive a few times lately without worrying about any drive overlay involved. And that is a copy without Service Pack 2. Are you using an upgrade or a
full installation disk? Check the disk for scratches, fingerprints, etc. If the disk is an upgrade
version you will need a working OS on the drive to upgrade from. A working full installation
disk will ready detect the full amout of the "raw" partition available after booting with it to
select the installation option. There is also a patch from MS for the 137gb limitation. Review
the Seagate article at: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...y_barrier.html

DanU · January 8th, 2006, 04:56 PM

Are you using NTFS? Windows XP won't allow you to partition/format a drive greater than 32GB in FAT32.

PC TECH250 · January 8th, 2006, 05:38 PM

98SE was run on a single primary 250gb partition with the DRFAT32 utility provided by WD.
Seagate will have a similar one ready for download. If something happens to an XP drive at
a later point you can have XP repartition and reformat it as an NTFS primary if it had a previous
Fat32 partition on it. Seagate's own utility would create the initial Fat32 partition where XP
would then delete the existing in favor of the NTFS if you choose that option. Most would.