Trouble formatting

[ThyMaster]

Hi all, I recently purchased an OEM 160GB Hitachi EIDE HD with an 8MB cache from newegg.

I've been trying without luck to format it in Windows with the Disk Management tool, I've tried long and quick formats but both end up telling me "Windows was unable to complete the format."

Is there something special I'm supposed to do? Thanks in advance!

 

[Ice Czar]

use NTFS your limited to 32GB per partition for FAT32

fisk will do a larger FAT32 partition but the question would be why?
by almost every single measure NTFS is superior to FAT32
unless you have a truely compelling reason (linux access, old games ect)

 

[ThyMaster]

I chose NTFS though

 

[Ice Czar]

OK well that is strange then
troubleshoot the HDD, check that it is properly jumpered
(make sure its not set to single if there is a slave present, make sure if its a master its at the end of the cable, try cable select, try it on the channel by itself, try a different cable, check the power connection

review the Corrupted Files!? sticky thread

from disk management you should be able to partition it
considering it a new HDD
you didnt convert it to a dynamic disk by chance?
in that case it would need to be initialized, but in true youd want to revert it back to a basic disk

what does it say in DiskManagement?

download the manufacturers diagnostic and access it from DOS and test it

 

[ThyMaster]

Thanks for all the help Ice Czar.

It turned out to be a jumper setting, I should have tried that first.

By default the drive is on 16 Heads, I set it to 15 Heads and everything worked properly. I never saw this option on a hard drive before so I thought nothing of it.

Thanks again.