New Secondary HD not allowing me to assign it a Volume Letter

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

Hello,

I am running windows 8.1, and I just put a secondary (actually 4th HD) Hard drive (Seagate Hybrid Drive ST2000DX001) into my computer. It shows up in the device manager, Bios, and disk management. Windows has not assigned a volume letter to it and all options are greyed out. It is listed as a GPT Protective Partition. I'm not sure if that's the issue. If it is, how do I fix it?

Thank You for your time.

Edit:
So I tried formatting the hard drive through the cmd and I get an error the request could not be performed because of an I/O error.

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

Where did this drive come from? I've seen that sort of issue arise on Mac-formatted drives. You might be able to use the diskpart command-line tool with the option "override" to get rid of that partition.

Open a command prompt as administrator and type "diskpart" to start it.
"list disk" to view a list of disks
"select disk X" to select the disk you want to work on (where X is the appropriate disk number)
"list partition"
"select partition Y"
"delete partition override"
"exit"

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

If that drive has multiple partitions, delete them all in that fashion, then format the drive in Disk Management

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

newegg. this is my 2nd drive, the first one was doa.

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

I can suggest a free boot disk, Gparted Live. Burn the iso to a disk and boot from it (be careful to select the right disk, perhaps unplug the other disks before you run that). There's also an option to create a bootable USB drive.

http://gparted.org/livecd.php

That is Linux based, but it can format to NTFS. Let me know what you see in there and any errors.

spooky2th · Jan 10, 2014

You probably need to change the partition type to MBR from GPT. How many gigs is the drive?

Edit:
Just looked it up and saw that it is a 2GB drive. Change it to MBR and it should be usable.

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

I am attempting to get gparted onto a usb. Spooky how do I change the partition type? When I format I get an I/O error

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

spooky2th :

A new drive shouldn't be MBR or GPT out of the box; it ships blank. Also that I/O error makes me suspicious the OP got a second bad drive. That said, let's see if gparted succeeds where Windows failed. IF there's still a problem, RMA it (again)

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

ugh, it took newegg nearly 3 weeks to send me a new one last time.

spooky2th · Jan 10, 2014

I/O errors are not good. I would RMA the drive like Schiztech, says.

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

so I followed the instructions for booting Gparted on a usb, i boot from usb and I get Syslinux 6.03 EDD .....Warning Co configuration file found
boot:

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

hit enter if you're stuck on boot, and hit enter to a few questions that come up after some stuff goes through on the terminal (the default answers are fine). Then the GUI will load with the partition editior

spooky2th · Jan 10, 2014

If you can format it as a logical partition. If successful, you should be able to install an OS or use it for storage or whatever. I would keep a check on the drive and if you keep getting R/W errors or any other errors like failed to read sectors, etc---RMA the drive.

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

Once the partition editor loads, choose between drives in the upper right-hand corner of the window (sda, sbd, etc) - that's linux numbering for drives 1,2, etc. You'll be able to see the current patition so check that before you do anything to a drive!

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

It loaded.

at /dev/sda - Gparted

It shows the hard drive 1.82TiB Unallocated
*sigh* Input/output error during the write on the drive.
Guess I'm RMAing it again.

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

I'm guessing this a bad drive anyway, but if we want to be thorough - what USB devices are attached? You may need to unplug whatever it's complaining about.

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

H2os :

OK then, is that the only drive attached? Unallocated is how a new (blank) HDD should appear. Right-click it, create a new partition and select NTFS as the format. Click the green check mark at the top row "Apply" to commit changes

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

H2os :

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

Thank you guys.

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

well I don't really know what's going on, I tried again and it worked. rebooted and the pc sees the drive, first time clicking it it took a few seconds(10 maybe) to open the blank drive, then created a folder and pasted some files to see if it writes.

SchizTech · Jan 10, 2014

Did you click apply to create the new partition (NTFS) in gparted? Anyway, keep a close eye on it - IO errors shouldn't be popping up

H2os · Jan 10, 2014

Nah it's not behaving correctly.

H2os · Jan 17, 2014

So, I received the replacements replacement. I'm still getting an I/O error. I originally had a SSD in the location. Would that prevent a different style HD from acting correctly if I had changed a setting to improve the SSDs performance? I have to believe that it's not the HD but my motherboard. Although the SSD that was there was working perfecting fine.

Edit: Reboot PC and it is formatting HD before assigning it a drive letter. I get Windows is Unable to complete the format. Check to make sure that the disk and drive are connected properly, make sure the disk is not read-only, try again.

H2os · Jan 17, 2014

So, I switche Sata 3 ports from 0 to 1, still got an I/O error. I then hooked it up to one of the Sata 2 ports and it works fine. I'm not really sure what the problem is. When I switch from 0 to 1 I moved the Boot Drive into 0 and it works fine. It booted quickly, no errors. So I assume the ports aren't bad, so what was the problem?

Edit: Well I hooked up my old SSD back up internally, and moved the new HD to a Sata 2 Spot. It reads everything fine. I'm curious now why the HD didn't like being in a Sata 3 location.

New Secondary HD not allowing me to assign it a Volume Letter

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