Can't format 'Write Protected' Drive? HELP...

[weatherphobia]

I decided to install my OLDER IDE drive on my gigabyte UD3p system which is QuadCore. I did this just to store backups and easily and fast make duplicates.

Trouble:It won't allow me to format this IDE drive, says it is write protected. I looked in the BIOS and nothing is there to disable this protection.

The drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L080P0 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive. I am using Vista home premium 64 bit OS.

Please help...

 

[steckman]

Just a stab in the dark ... does the drive have pins on the back that you can jumper? Do any of those pins allow you to set the drive to read only? Is something shorting across those pins by mistake?

 

[weatherphobia]

Just a stab in the dark ... does the drive have pins on the back that you can jumper? Do any of those pins allow you to set the drive to read only? Is something shorting across those pins by mistake?

All I did was set it as Master and there are not any other jumpers or configurations I could find even on the driver makers website, pdf's etc...

??

 

[aford10]

You can't format your master HD inside windows. If you want to do it inside windows, it needs to be set as a slave drive.

If you have an OS disc, you can boot off the cd and format it that way. But then your friend may have to boot off of an OS cd and install windows on his mobo or repair the fresh windows install.

 

[steckman]

I seem to remember that Maxtor drives also could be set as "Master" or "Master with CLJ" by jumper configuration. CLJ shouldn't cause the write-protected problem, but you never know ... some chipsets just didn't like CLJ. If your 80gb drive is showing up as a 32gb drive, then CLJ is probably enabled.
As far as what aford10 said, is this IDE drive showing up as a your main drive or is it like D: or E: or something?

 

[weatherphobia]

I seem to remember that Maxtor drives also could be set as "Master" or "Master with CLJ" by jumper configuration. CLJ shouldn't cause the write-protected problem, but you never know ... some chipsets just didn't like CLJ. If your 80gb drive is showing up as a 32gb drive, then CLJ is probably enabled.
As far as what aford10 said, is this IDE drive showing up as a your main drive or is it like D: or E: or something?

It's showing as drive F:

It just seems odd to format a drive and then see it has 92 megabytes of space 'in use'?

How do I see what that 92mb is and more importantly how to delete that odd 92 mb of 'used space'?

 

[steckman]

Now, I'm confused ... I thought you said you couldn't format the drive. Are you now saying that you did format the drive and you are seeing 92MB in use? A tool like Partition Magic might also be able to help you out here.

 

[weatherphobia]

Now, I'm confused ... I thought you said you couldn't format the drive. Are you now saying that you did format the drive and you are seeing 92MB in use? A tool like Partition Magic might also be able to help you out here.

YES I was able to format the IDE drive but it shows 91.9 MB of used space. I can't see it or delete it or anything.

I have partition magic 8.0 but according to Micro$ofts online compatibility checker it says that version will not work at all.

Should I try to install it anyway?

I've noticed if I install some 32 bit prgs it causes strange problems like freezing pausing etc.

If you or anyone else knows how to make this drive completely empty please let me know.


p.s. I've formatted drives since the Commodore 64 days so this is bewildering to me..

 

[steckman]

Yeah, I'm not sure. Whenever I had stubborn partitions or anything like that in the XP days or before I used Partition Magic. If they haven't developed a version for Vista, then I'm stumped.

 

[Paperdoc]

If I get you right, your system has a perfectly good C: drive from which you can boot and run successfully. You want to add in an older IDE drive and you do NOT want to keep anything it has on it.

In this case I would hook up the old IDE drive to the Primary IDE Port (if you have two, or maybe it's the ONLY IDE port) of the mobo and set its jumpers to Master (with no Slave present, if that's an option). This assumes you do not have already a master or slave on the Primary IDE Port. From there I would go into Windows Disk Manager, find this newly-installed drive, and DELETE all of its partitions. When this is done you should have one physical drive of the size you expect, all of it being Unallocated. Then you create a new Partition on it, using all its available space, and making it NOT bootable. When that's done you Format this new partition. Reboot and you should find the drive in Windows My Computer as a new drive with no data on it.

 

[weatherphobia]

If I get you right, your system has a perfectly good C: drive from which you can boot and run successfully. You want to add in an older IDE drive and you do NOT want to keep anything it has on it.

In this case I would hook up the old IDE drive to the Primary IDE Port (if you have two, or maybe it's the ONLY IDE port) of the mobo and set its jumpers to Master (with no Slave present, if that's an option). This assumes you do not have already a master or slave on the Primary IDE Port. From there I would go into Windows Disk Manager, find this newly-installed drive, and DELETE all of its partitions. When this is done you should have one physical drive of the size you expect, all of it being Unallocated. Then you create a new Partition on it, using all its available space, and making it NOT bootable. When that's done you Format this new partition. Reboot and you should find the drive in Windows My Computer as a new drive with no data on it.

I'm going to try that. be back soonish with results...

 

[Paperdoc]

Oh, just thought of something to add!

The "Write Protected" thingy may be a setting in the Windows OS and you'd want to make sure that is removed. So stick this into the sequence.

After you Delete the Partitions on the old drive in Disk Manager, exit that utility and go into the hardware manager system. Do Start ... Control Panel ... System. Choose the Hardware tab, then the Device Manager button and expand the Disk Drives to expose all the hardware disk units. RIGHT-click on the old drive you're trying to work on, and BE VERY SURE you have the correct unit chosen! Uninstall this HDD, then back out and shut down your system. Unplug the power cord, open the case, and disconnect the old drive's cables. Close up and reboot, then you can check in Device Manager that the disk really is not there. Shut down. Hopefully this procedure has convinced Windows that the old disk no longer exists and it will purge all references to it. Now you unplug power, open the case, reconnect the old disk, and close up. Reboot and Windows should find the "new" device and make sure it has a driver installed (look in Device Manager). Then you go into Disk Manager for the Partition and Format steps to get your "new" device ready to use.

 

[weatherphobia]

Oh, just thought of something to add!

The "Write Protected" thingy may be a setting in the Windows OS and you'd want to make sure that is removed. So stick this into the sequence.

After you Delete the Partitions on the old drive in Disk Manager, exit that utility and go into the hardware manager system. Do Start ... Control Panel ... System. Choose the Hardware tab, then the Device Manager button and expand the Disk Drives to expose all the hardware disk units. RIGHT-click on the old drive you're trying to work on, and BE VERY SURE you have the correct unit chosen! Uninstall this HDD, then back out and shut down your system. Unplug the power cord, open the case, and disconnect the old drive's cables. Close up and reboot, then you can check in Device Manager that the disk really is not there. Shut down. Hopefully this procedure has convinced Windows that the old disk no longer exists and it will purge all references to it. Now you unplug power, open the case, reconnect the old disk, and close up. Reboot and Windows should find the "new" device and make sure it has a driver installed (look in Device Manager). Then you go into Disk Manager for the Partition and Format steps to get your "new" device ready to use.

I'll try that this evening. However I have successfully Formatted this IDE drive about 5 times in a row but it still shows 91.9 MB of space as "used". Do you have any clue as to what that is? I used to use LockFolder XP 3.5, it allows you to hide/encrypt a file/files or drive. Is is possible that 91.9 MB is that encrpted/hidden files done by LockFolder? Since using VISTA that LockFolder program will not install and cannot be used so do you know of any way to find this 91.9 mb and/or delete those files/space?

I may have missed this but the 80-pin ribbon is such that the IDE drive is on the 1st [middle] of the ribbon. Is this the problem? SHould it ,the IDE drive, be on the END of the ribbon?

But isn't that moot since the IDE drive is jumpered to be Master?

Thanks for your and others help with this issue.

 

[aford10]

If you want the drive as Master, the jumper should be on master, and the drive should be on the END of the cable.

 

[weatherphobia]

If you want the drive as Master, the jumper should be on master, and the drive should be on the END of the cable.

It is jumpered Master but the fact that I've put it on the middle of the ide ribbon seems to not be a problems since it is recognized by Vista, I can save/delete to this IDE drive and it even formats correctly.

How this deal where I cannot delete or even view these odd files could be because I have the IDE drive in the wrong position[the END as opposed t my choice of the middle)??

 

[TheDraac]

About that "strange" 92MB of used space... That is used by format when you set up the drive. When you format a drive it allocates space for the boot record, master file record and master file record copy. It's the filing system that allows the system to find files on your drive.

BTW, I just installed 2 60GB drives for testing, both are freshly formatted and both show 91.3MB of used space.

So there is NOTHING to delete. Remember, when drives were quite a bit smaller than they are now, the amount of "overhead" required for "filing" purposes were also very small.

As for location on the cable, that "USUALLY" only matters when your drive is set to Cable Select or has NO jumpers to set slave/master mode. Usually.

 

[steckman]

Wow, I didn't know windows showed things like the boot record and file allocation table as used space. Is that new under Vista? That would totally explain everything.

 

[weatherphobia]

About that "strange" 92MB of used space... That is used by format when you set up the drive. When you format a drive it allocates space for the boot record, master file record and master file record copy. It's the filing system that allows the system to find files on your drive.

BTW, I just installed 2 60GB drives for testing, both are freshly formatted and both show 91.3MB of used space.

So there is NOTHING to delete. Remember, when drives were quite a bit smaller than they are now, the amount of "overhead" required for "filing" purposes were also very small.

As for location on the cable, that "USUALLY" only matters when your drive is set to Cable Select or has NO jumpers to set slave/master mode. Usually.

What you say makes since. I've formatted before but never paid attention but do remember reading about the OverHead space for boot sector etc....

If only I'd know this 5 days ago