pc wont let me install windows

SameSuspect · 4 Nov 2006 at 22:35

today i decided to do a fresh format and install of windows xp. But keeps failing.. before installing xp its asking me to format..

I have 2 wd sataII 80gb drives in raid0, stright after the formats complete, the installation aborts, telling me the drive cannot be formatted because the disk could be damaged or not connected properly ect... so i checked and everything is connected fine.

so to see if i did have a naffed hdd, i took them off raid and tried formatting both to see which one is failing. to find out they both are doing the same thing.

now im completely stuck without an os!!

any help is highly apreciated! im missing my desktop pc already

squiffy · 4 Nov 2006 at 22:38

Do you have PATA you can try it on? (XP install disc sometimes has problems with SATA) if that works then you know SATA problem. You might need SP2 install disc.

SameSuspect · 4 Nov 2006 at 22:48

well i have formatted these drives a lot of times before, this is the 1st time iv had this sort of problem, its strange.

i think maybe it could be a raid bios problem?

SameSuspect · 4 Nov 2006 at 23:19

this is what it says on the formatting screen

C: Partition 1 [Unknown] 152587mb

on 152587 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on m5288 [MBR]

that looks a bit odd to me??

sja360 · 5 Nov 2006 at 00:20

SameSuspect said:
this is what it says on the formatting screen

C: Partition 1 [Unknown] 152587mb

on 152587 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on m5288 [MBR]

that looks a bit odd to me??

doesnt look odd, remember you've got em in raid 0 meaning the two 80's become s 1 partition around 150-160GB.

SameSuspect · 5 Nov 2006 at 15:09

it says similar to that when raid isnt on, just with a smaller hdd size