Problem Formatting Hard drive space

[sriramsv]

Hi Friends,

I recently purchased Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive for my new system. I partitioned the HD to 3 drives, namely ~75,~35, ~40. But I couldn't see the 3rd Drive(40GB) as one of the drives in My Computer. When I checked the Computer Management, it stayed as free space. When I tried formatting, it said Windows was unnable to format successfully. After almost 10 trys for changing the HD formattable space, I was able to format almost most of the space with 116MB space not able to format. When contacted the Microsoft technical support, they said it might be HD prob. I really don't care abt 116MB of free space, but I more worried it shouldn't affect my system later. Please give me some suggestions!

Thanks

 

[muffin]

Does it all appear properly in the BIOS? What OS are you using? If you have it in 2 partitions, does it use it all? I'd see if it can be returned, if everything else checks out.

 

[pscowboy]

Tell us the procedure you used to partition.

 

[sriramsv]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply.. I was sick for couple of days and didn't come near my system.

It does appear in BIOS.. I checked it.. it shows 159GB

I'm running XP Proff with SP2

Even If I've it in 2 partition, it doesn't use it all.. there is some portion of the HD which is not formattable.

Not sure whats the prob is!!!

 

[sriramsv]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply.

As per the procedure, I just followed the steps while loading XP. I created 3 partition in the beginning out of which one was not getting formatted. So I divided the 3rd drive to 2 parts, one with 35GB and other with 116MB thru Computer Management.

I didn't do anything fancy as I'm not very good in these..!!!

Please let me what should I do nxt!

 

[pscowboy]

How about starting over.

You can kill the partitions in DOS. I'll elaborate in the next post.

Pop in the XP cd, restart. When you get to the screen to partition & format - just set up ONE partition of 40g. You can do whatever you want with the other 120g after XP is installed by going to Disk Management.

If you have a floppy drive, you need a W98 (or ME) boot floppy diskette.
If you don't, it's a little trickier - you have to burn a bootable cd with DOS utilities on it.

Let us know.

 

[sriramsv]

kool.. let me try ur steps and will let u know

 

[sriramsv]

thanks man.. it worked.. I've 2 primary drives and 2 external drives!!!!!