Can't format

Camalot

Camalot

Camalot

Soldato
Joined
7 Mar 2005
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Wolverhampton
Can't format my slave drive, my boot drive is an 80GB SATA, my other drive is an IDE 20GB drive, when i right click on it in windows it says it cant format, any reason why?

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Try doing it through the administrator tools (disk management) -should be a little easier - if not you can always fdisk it - that'll show windows who's boss :D (All you need now is for it to give the universal 2 fingers by suggesting you contact your administrator! :mad: )
 
can you not delete the partition - should have the same effect - then you can re-partition it and reformat it.

If not - creat a boot disk - copy fdisk.exe onto it (when you run it it then explains itself as it goes along.)

or...

If you've got your windows cd - pop it in and boot off it - when you select install windows you will be given the option to repartition/reformat drives - probably the easiest solution - just make sure you format the right one!

(Before doing that you might want to try booting in safe mode and seeing if you can format then)
 
cavemanoc said:
can you not delete the partition - should have the same effect - then you can re-partition it and reformat it.

If not - creat a boot disk - copy fdisk.exe onto it (when you run it it then explains itself as it goes along.)

or...

If you've got your windows cd - pop it in and boot off it - when you select install windows you will be given the option to repartition/reformat drives - probably the easiest solution - just make sure you format the right one!

(Before doing that you might want to try booting in safe mode and seeing if you can format then)
Click to expand...

ok thanks for that, going to try in safe mode first, then boot from xp cd. ill let you know how i get on while its half time on socker aid lol !
 
Sounds like it's trying to boot off the drive you formatted instead of your windows one - had his issue when I reformatted mine (admittedly it was a Scsi issue - but the principal is the same) - what types of drives are they?
 
I think i done it all wrong to be honest.

The only one i can select in BIOS says IDE maxtor, but when thats selected, my sata one boots up fine.....i dont know whats going on :(

Once a sata and the other i just formatted is an IDE HDD. On IDE1 i got my dvd drive connected to my IDE HDD drive, then to mobo.

The sata one just is just straight to mobo.

EDIT - Looked in BIOS some more. On sata1 it says "not detected" how is this so lol...on post it says sata1 maxtor 80gb which is the drive im on now?
 
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I wouldn't worry too much about the bios not seeing your sata dirive - as long as it's picked up when it boots.

So... if you disconnect the IDE - your system boots fine, but with it connected it complains about the windows install? (let me know if that's right)

You could try booting off the windows cd again - remove the partition from the IDE drive (it will now be unformatted - ie. unreadable) then boot back into windows on the sata drive - go into Admin tools - disk management - and repartition the IDE drive:

I had a similar problem when I re-installed, the windows CD 'decided' on which drive would be the primary boot device (your IDE) even though I wanted to boot off another drive - and I got the same errors you're seeing. The only way I got around it was to disconnect the drives and re-introduce them 1 at a time (I have a few :D )

That should then sort out your problem (you can do a quick format in disk tools to save time if you like!)

In the bios you should have an option to boot off Sata - press enter on the boot order option and it'll give you a list (Advanced settings in the bios)
 
i downloaded a sata driver from my mobo site and booted.

Bios then showed me two hard drives, I selected my sata as the boot drive and now everything works fine :D :D :D

Thanks very much for your help :)

Just to top it off, my cpu just decided to boot at 2.6 :D
 
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