Cannot format a particular partition on 1TB Caviar Black with XPSP3

[njitgrad]

Using Windows Disk Management, I partitioned a brand new 1TB Black Caviar drive (WD1002FAEX-0023A0) into four primary partitions (25GB, 75GB, 500GB, and the remainder was for the fourth partition).

I was able to do a quick format on the 25GB and 75GB partitions with no problem, however when I attempted to quick format the 500GB I got the error message "The format did not complete successfully". I was able to successfuly do a quick format on the 4th partition with no problem.

I then attempted a standard formatting of the 500GB partition and it got as far as 55% and then just hung infinitely for hours.

Am I missing some sort of new utility? I already have three 1TB drives installed on my machine. Each of those are 1-2 years old.

 

[njitgrad]

Well I tried flashing the BIOS on my EVGA 680i SLi mobo to P33 and that didn't do the trick, I tried different SATA cables and that also didn't work, I even moved the connection from the new HD to one of my SATA controller cards (rather than using my mobos built-in SATA controller) and still no change.

I did note something very interesting though. For the 25GB partition that worked, when I tried to copy a folder containing ~1GB of data from one of my older drives to the 25GB partition, it was SUPER SLOW to copy. I even tried it with terracopy to see the transfer rate. Ridiculously slow. This is a 6 GB/s SATA drive. What gives?

Could this be a lack of power issue? I have a 550W Antec. In my box I have an EVGA 8800GS vid card, five hard drives (1TB x 4 and 320GB x 1 ), two DVD burners, and a media card console reader.

 

[Boomer83]

That's is strange, It could just be a bad drive. Have you ran chkdsk? Also, I doubt it's a PSU issue but for you can calculate your recommended wattage here: http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/

May I ask why you want to have 4 partitions on a single drive?

 

[njitgrad]

May I ask why you want to have 4 partitions on a single drive?

I partition all of my drives according to purpose (PHOTO/VIDEOS/MUSIC/etc). Its just how my brain works.

 

[PCmaus]

Has anyone helped you fix your problem or have you fixed it yourself?

I'm having a similar problem with an internal Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD on Vista. Disk Management will not allow me to format any partition that is 500GB or more. When I use Quick Format, I see the message "Formatting . . .", then it disappears, but Disk Management still indicates that the drive is "RAW". If I try a regular format, it hangs at 46%. I have 2GB RAM and an AMD 2400+ processor. The HDD is brand new.