Formatting SATA hard drives

[Anarchystorm]

I have now had my SATA hard drive for about 6 months and never got round to using it.

I once got it formatted with XP on and thne I got a sasser worm or virus. I am trying to format it again and put XP back on but I cnat get it to work.

Its a Maxtor Diamond PLus SATA 120gig hard drive.

Can someone please helpe me with this.

IS there an easy way to format it and get XP on and how long should it take?

At the moment it just sits on the 'Staring to load Windows' part after I ahve installed the SATA RAID driver from the floppy disk.

PLEEEEASE HELP!!

[plotloss]

Attach it to the machine.

Copy the drivers onto the current c:

It should then show up in Windows Disk Manager...

[Anarchystorm]

plotloss said:

Attach it to the machine. Copy the drivers onto the current c: It should then show up in Windows Disk Manager...

Ok, as I hate Win XP and havent used it before, can u be a bit more specific. Sorry to be a hassle

[paolow]

i also have had problems with maxtor drives and xp. iirc maxtor have a kill disk utilitly on thier website that you stick on a floppy and it scrubs the whole drive. worked for me.

[Anarchystorm]

Do you have a link to it so I can get the correct one?

And how long did it take you to install.

Basically, the 'Loading windows' screen has been there for an hour now and after that it goes to 'examining hard drive' and that went on for an hour before I restarted my pc. Am I doing something wrong?

[paolow]

TBH i cant remember - but there are also disk scrubbing tools on download.com that you could try if all else fails? sorry im being a bit vague, but the last time i used it all was bout 8 months ago. ill post again later if i have more time.

[Anarchystorm]

Anyone else with any clues as to whether I am doing it right or not? It worked before but its not now - is it because there is now data on the disk?

[Hamster]

WindowsXP dosen't come with native drivers for SATA. To do a clean install you either have to load the drivers and format it in an existing installation as a slave drive or better, install it on it's own and when you boot from your XP CD press F6 and load the SATA drivers from the floppy that hopefully came with the drive. Then XP will see it as usual.

[ErnestM]

I believe if you use the SP1 Windows XP load, the SATA drivers are included...

Could be a BIOS setting. You may have to tell your BIOS what "access order" you want your drives in before Windows can spot the intended "C" drive... (especially if you are already set up with regular IDE drives)

ErnestM

[warmfuzzies]

xp will not use the correct SATA drivers, you must when building use the drivers that came on floppy disk, or d/l from the maunfacturer. Use Google, will become your friend and guide.

XP can format the drive for you it's normally an option on the install. Or fit it to another M/C and format it there, then load XP.

Kevin..

[anarchystorm]

Hey all. Im not trying to make anyone sound stupid so I will explain again.

I have a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 120GB SATA Drive. I have actually got Windows XP installed but it has a Sasserworm/virus and I would like to format/reinstall the drive.

When I try to reinstall and get to the format point of the installation, I cnat get the SATA hard drive to do this.

Ido run the SATA drivers from a floppy and I then get through to XP set up. XP setup hen loads the SATA drivers when pressing F6 and then says at the bottom of the blue screen..... 'Set up is loading windows'. This then stays like this for well over 2 hrs - WHAT CAN I DO?!!!

Thanks :P

[warmfuzzies]

Hmmm,

have you tried to use DR DOS or similar, what I mean by this is to delete any partion data, I sometimes use format/mbr...to start from scratch. Really from scratch with a low level format using the disk manufacturers util. Then using a win 98 disk I recreate the partitions....etc etc.
Then I load up windows from the DVD drive loading the sata drivers to suit from floppy. I have an ABIT NF7 ver2 mobo and Maxtor dives using the ABIT seriel [not a typo] connector, not true SATA but running from the SATA Raid connector.

Have you tried a low level format? I can almost asure you its the sata drivers that are causing this as the time taken to install windows shows this......Maybe there are updated drivers, if the original ones on the floppy don't work....?
Sorry its not working for you, but this always works for me....oh a small tip, get Norton Ghost, or similar, then ghost the drive onto CD/DVD and bobs your uncle the next time you need to install anything..

kevin.