Crouching SATA cable, Hidden Hard Drive

[TooTall]

Hi,

I'm having real trouble getting access to a new SATA HDD I bought. It's a Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F3. I wanted to replace my HDD with this one, so I took mine out and put that one in and booted from my Windows CD to format the drive and install Windows on it.

Windows started doing it's thing then just decided there was no hard drive there and stopped everything, I tried a couple more times but with the same results. I read online the drive needs to be initialized and formatted with Windows Disc Management before it'll be usable. So I put my old HDD back in, and plugged in the F3 along side it as a secondary drive, so I can get it going.

Here's the problem, it's not showing up in Windows anywhere. It's on my BIOS with all the correct information but it's not in windows disc management or device manager or anywhere. However, something somewhere knows it's there because every time I boot up, Windows keeps checking the disc for consistency, then it goes about reading what must be some car crash windows files on there from the previous install attempts and telling my this and that is unreadable, which I don't really care about, I just want to get the drive formatted and initialized!

Can anyone tell me how I can gain access to this drive, I've looked around various forums but I can seem to find answers to my specific problem, just similar problems but their's are usually resolved with disc management.

I've included some screenshots of the drive in my BIOS and the checks that go on when I boot up. Any help is greatly appreciated!

BIOS:
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f261/sieworld/DSC_0082.jpg

Consistency check:
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f261/sieworld/DSC_0083.jpg

 

[RealBeast]

I would leave it attached as a secondary drive and start your OS up then run diskpart in the command prompt window. It should show up if it is recognized by the bios.

diskpart
list disk
select disk # (whatever the secondary drive is numbered in the list)

and then whatever command you want to run, like clean and then create partition. Here is a complete list of all commands and syntax: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770877%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

 

[TooTall]

Thanks for the reply RealBeast. I'll give that a go and update accordingly.

 

[TooTall]

UPDATE

I've fired up diskpart and done the appropriate commands. It's not showing up on there either. I doubled checked the BIOS when I powered up and it is still showing on the BIOS, correct disc and details etc.

Any other ideas for this?

 

[larkspur]

Hi TooTall - Samsung HDDs are now owned and serviced by Seagate. Seatools for DOS is what Seagate recommends you use on your Samsung HDD to help diagnose what the problem is.

I noticed your BIOS has SMART checking disabled. The drive may have tripped SMART and that may be why Windows wants to do a chkdsk on the drive.

Go to Seagate's website and download SeaTools for DOS. It is an ISO you can burn to a CD. Then, with your good drive DISCONNECTED and only the Samsung F3 plugged in, boot from the SeaTools disk and run whatever diagnostics the instructions recommend. You might have to go into BIOS and change the SATA mode to "IDE" to make SeaTools "see" your drive. (Don't change it unless it doesn't work and if you do change it make sure you change it back when you reinstall your other drive).

http://www.seagate.com/support/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/spinpoint-f-series/

 

[smorizio]

check the sata port you used. it could be one of the non intel ports or you could have put it on one of the raid ports. in the bios check that the hd sata mode set to ach and not raid or ide. if there fine boot off of hirm boot cd tools disk or windows disk again with just the new drive plugged in. check that there no bios updates for the drive to fix any bugs. if there none try running fdisk/mbr then a new fisk with the other drives unplugged. if you can fdisk the drive it may be a bad drive and i would return it.

 

[larkspur]

Windows started doing it's thing then just decided there was no hard drive there and stopped everything, I tried a couple more times but with the same results.

Elaborate a little on the details of these specifics. There should be no reason a windows install disk can't install to a brand new F3 unless its a bad drive or unless you haven't plugged it in right. There's no need to initialize, manually partition, format, or any of that on a brand-new disk especially when installing windows with the disk. The install program will do all of that. Even if you have the SATA mode set to IDE it will still install (but AHCI or RAID [if you use it] is preferable).

At what point did it 'decide there was no hard drive there'? Did it ever see the drive? Initial install page -> Select Disk for installation -> Automatically Partitioning -> Automatic Format (quick format) -> Copying files -> Wants to reboot to complete

 

[TooTall]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm going to start going through everything that's been mentioned and I'll update accordingly.

 

[TooTall]

UPDATE

Thanks for the Seagate info, I didn't know they'd taken over the drives, at one point before I got here I was on Samsung looking for a diagnostic tool.

Anyway, I made the boot CD and ran SeaTools on the drive. The drive failed both the short and long test, the tool said it wasn't responding to commands.

I've ran the drive on a range of cables and ports, including the combo that runs my current drive perfectly. It looks like the HDD is FUBAR.

The last thing I can think of is to borrow a friend's external housing for SATA internals and plug it in as a USB external drive and see if I can do anything with it that way.

Thanks again for the help everyone. I'll update this thread when I get hold of the housing just out of curiosity for you guys but I'm pretty sure I'm beating a dead horse here.

 

[larkspur]

Sounds very much like a defective drive. Since it's brand new RMA the drive to the retailer you got it from and get a brand-new replacement. Doing a warranty claim with Seagate/Samsung would be more hassle than it'd be worth plus they might send you a refurbished drive or something, I'm not sure what their policy is.

 

[TooTall]

I'll have a look into it. To be honest, I bought the drive a while ago and I've been putting off installing it so I might be out of any sort of return time.

I'll see what happens. I've got a shred of hope for the external housing.

You guys have been great though. I wouldn't mind hanging around here.

 

[larkspur]

Sure, np. If you are past the retailer's return period then just deal with Seagate/Samsung, they'll get you working at least.