Hard Drives Constantly Becoming "Unformatted"

**Lowride24** · October 12th, 2003, 12:44 AM

HELP!!!! I am running Windows 2000 Pro on a P4 2.4 533 system. I'm using a 60G WD drive as my primary and (2) WD 180G data drives (for video editing). My Soyo mobo is capable of supporting up to a 200G hard drive. Here's my problem.

CONSTANTLY, I go to access my 180's and I get a message from Windows, "Drive D: (or H: depending on whos turn it is) is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?" This has happened 5 times in the last month and a half and I'm getting tired of loosing data.

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Thanks!

**meese** · October 12th, 2003, 06:40 PM

Does the BIOS recognize the drive properly? It sounds to me like the drive may not be seen the same by the bios each time you boot. When you get the "not formatted" message, go to computer management and see how your system views the drive.

**Lowride24** · October 12th, 2003, 08:41 PM

Yeah... everything looks fine. What usually happens is I go to access a file and I get a message that the file is corrupt. Then upon my next boot up, is says the drive isn't formatted. The file system changes from NTFS to RAW.

**meese** · October 13th, 2003, 07:34 AM

Even though your motherboard is supposed to be able to recognize this size drive, I don't think it sees it properly. Does it have the latest version of the BIOS?

**Lowride24** · October 13th, 2003, 10:26 PM

It sure does. I've just recently flashed it. I checked with their site and no new update is available.

**kongman** · October 31st, 2003, 03:32 PM

We are having the same problem

Anyone know whats up?

**nobodyridz4free** · December 24th, 2003, 10:05 PM

I am having the exact same problem with my WD160GB SE and WD200 GB SE Hard Drives. The drives are in different computers and slaved. I do video editing also. The 200 is new and I wanted to use it to backup my other files, but when I copy them to the new drive they become corrupt. 160 just gave me the not formatted msg last night. comp with 200 is custom built and the 160 comp is an alienware. I scanned this comp(60+120+ 200GB) for viruses with norton av corp 8.0 + lastest definitions and nothing. please post here if you have any info on it.
thx,
jared

**John Prophet** · December 24th, 2003, 10:17 PM

se if this is related http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....YWdlPTE*&p_li=

what other os'es are u guys running?

What service pack on the w2000 machine?

**nobodyridz4free** · December 24th, 2003, 11:00 PM

I formatted the drive from windows. Would formatting with there util make a difference? I can see both drives correctly in BIOS.
Im running 2000 SP4 with all updates.
System:
Asus A7V266 MB BIOS A1011
Athlon XP2000+ cpu (also not running correctly, running at 1.26ghz, was working fine when installed at 1667 mhz, appears not wanting to run at 133 clock setting)
256MB DDR2100? = 266mhz
60GB hitachi master, 120GB maxtor slave, 200GB WD SE(secondary master)

Other comp w/160GB SE is an Alienware