Urgent Help for Mum with Sata Drive Problems !

[Dibdobbs]

Hi, I have an AMD 64 bit PC with 2 gig memory, 2 X 200 Gbyte drives and an Hitachi 400GB Sata Drive which was fitted by an Evesham engineer. For some reason this worked fine for 3-4 weeks, then suddenly you could not see the drive.

No Viruses on machine, and it appears to have lost it's partition ?? I managed to recover my data using a program I bought and have backed this up. Not happy that something might be wrong with this drive & as it stores 186 GBytes of my valuable photos, installed a New Hitachi 400 GB Sata Drive.

Right Clicking on My Computer and Manage, you can see the drive as "active" and "healthy", but you can't access it. Have tried formatting it 4-5 times. It seems to do something, takes forever, but never completes it successfully.

I don't have any idea what to try next? What can I try if Windows XP won't format it?

I am a Mum and not at all technical, and would greatly appreciate any help or ideas you could give me.

Thanks, eagerly await your help !. Warm regards.

 

[paparazi]

Dibdobbs
One of my best friends works for Evesham Micro's, top company!
I understand all their work is gauranteed and they offer a prompt call out service.
Surely the best thing to do is call them out under warranty repair.

Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[Dibdobbs]

Thanks Paparazi. Spoke with Evesham, who I agree are usually good, but all they offered was we can't help you with data recovery, and in all his experience of 12 years, he had nOT heard of a drive going wrong. They suggested it might be a virus.,however, I confirmed have the lates full security suite from McAfee, and that I run a virus check over night every night, and nothing has come up.

So unfortunately I am left with a drive they feel is nothing wrong with ... and I have now inserted a new drive and cannot format this? Would appreciate any advice as to what might be the reasons why windows won't format a drive?

 

[paparazi]

Dibdobbs
Having read your description again I guess that Evesham concluded the problem was not down to them as even another new drive is playing up.

Have you tried downloading and installing the latest SATA controller driver from the motherboard manufacturers website?

You could try downloading the drive manufacturers (Hitachi?) hard drive utility tools, which are free and contain tools preparing the drive for use.

Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[mainegeek]

Dibdobbs,
Have you tried deleting the partition and create a new one,then format it?

 

[Frank4d]

If it is a single SATA drive, look in BIOS Setup and for SATA drive mode make sure it is set to IDE... not RAID.

 

[firewolfrl]

first download and install Maxtweaks

http://www.tech52.com/

reboot

go to the device manager and click "show hidden devices" in View

see if your controller is in the list with yellow in front.
If it is then it is a controller issue.
if not then it may be the drive.
the quote from the tech "in all his experience of 12 years, he had nOT heard of a drive going wrong."

THAT IS A BUNCH OF BULL CRAP drives go bad. I have seen bad drives right out of the package. and that goes for any hard drive manufacturer.

if the controller can be seen
Run " diskmgmt.msc "
and see if the drive is there but no drive letter assigned

if all of those above do not help

try the drive in a different computer


let me know what you find out?