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[benrad]

I went out and picked up a WD 250 GB Media Center (hmmm?) external firewire drive last week. I was attempting to reformat it using NTFS, and I seemed to have messed something up. My system will see the drive, but it will not complete a successful format. The drive comes formatted FAT32, and now it appears to be in some sort of weird format limbo. I typically work with IDE drives, so any sort of FDISK DOS based utilities don't really work (They can't see it) when I try to do a low level format. I've run out of ideas. My system is running XP Pro SP2, and I'm formatting through Disk Manager. I've tried a quick format and a regular old 4 hour format, and I get "The Format Did Not Complete Successfully."

The Firewire card is fine because I'm able to sync my iPod with no problems.

Anyone run into this problem at all?

[CDvd]

It seems to me that XP allows the conversion from Fat32 to NTFS.
Did you tryed that?
it should be something like :
C:\> CONVERT  g:  /fs:ntfs

[benrad]

Yeah, I could try that...I'd prefer a straight format tho'. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Nolonemo]

Acronis Disk Manager will run under XP, should see the firewire drive, and will let you perform partition operations (if I were in your shoes, I'd restart by partitioning the drive).

The other thing you could try is to remove the drive from the firewire enclosure, plug it into your PC like any internal IDE drive and go from there.  Once you have it all formatted, put it back in the firewire enclosure.

[Robert Taylor]

Have you tried deleting the existing partition(s) on the drive and re-creating before your format using Disk Manager?

[Omni]

Windows, by default, is limited partition sizes 128 GB (with 1 GB = 1024 MB) or 137 GB (with 1 GB = 1000 MB).

You'll need to install a driver to have Windows recognize anything over the above.  When I bought the first "200 MB" drive made by WD, they included with it a PCI IDE I/O card to support the drive and a driver disk for use in Windows.  If you are just using your motherboard's standard IDE controller (assuming your chipset/BIOS can handle a drive that size), then you are on your own trying to get the right driver.    The HD's website would be a good place to start.

The other solution is just to partition the drive into two 125 MB partitions.  If you do that, then no special drivers are needed.

[Omni]

Oh, and though it will take a long time, be sure to do a full format, not a quick format, to verify that Windows can access each and every sector.

Using my 200 MB drive as an example again, when I upgraded my system a few weeks ago and connected my drive, Windows gave the impression that it could see it all and all its data.  (You know, it would state in Explorer:  Total Size:  186 GB.)  Later when I was trying to read stuff from and and copy stuff to it, it kept getting errors.  Long story short, I ended up losing a lot of data because I forgot to install the special driver!!  This was with Windows XP (SP2) and the newest model motherboard/chipset.

Moral:  Verify with a full format that the entire drive is accessible.  "Quick Format" only clears the FAT and directories.

[benrad]

Yes, I've tried all of that...it's going to be a backup drive, so each time I've attempted to format it, I just blow away the whole partition, and still no luck. I'm using the WD Media Center driver, so the Windows size limit doesn't apply and it's a firewire drive, so it's not a motherboard limitation. I think there's something wrong somewhere between the driver and Windows. I can see the drive in Disk Manager, but when I attempt to set up the drive in the WD drive setup utility it can't see the drive. I took it over to a neighbor's house tonight and I get the same problem. It's probably something wonky with the drive or the MBR on the drive.

Thanks for the advice.

I await another useless email from Western Digital Tech Support.

[Omni]

I know this is irrelevant to your situtation benrad--I misread your original post...sorry!--but as an update to my previous information, it seems that SP1 will install the correct 48-bit drivers needed to access drives above the 137 GB mark.

I'll be testing this out next week with my next board.    I guess the reason *I* still needed to install my 3rd party drivers was because I was using a 3rd party PCI IDE I/O board. <shrug>  Next week, I'll try plugging in my drive to the motherboard's standard IDE port and see what happens.

Anyway, I just wanted to update this in case this thread is view later by forum search junkies.  

[bebop]

Benrad, I had a similar problem, and it turned out to be a windows related thing,  and even trying to install the driver from the disc didn't work - had to take it in to my locat techie.  He finally got the correct driver  from the hard drive site  (using Promise)  and an update from MS and then it worked fine.

Omni...just who you callin'  forum search junkies??!!!  

Good luck.  B

Listening to: 'To The Moon And Back [Long Edit]' from 'Savage Garden' by 'Savage Garden' on Media Center 10

[benrad]

Hmmmm, so I wonder if the "new" drive they're sending me will do the same thing...Do you have any of the details of the fix?

Thanks,

BenRad

[bebop]

Benrad, here's a link to the driver that  my tech gave me. Windows seems to have a problem with drives over 132 Gb.      It's at least worth a try.  Bet

http://support.wdc.com/download/#promisedriver

[Omni]

Hey, before you go start installing drivers, I have an amendment to my amendment.    

Check out this article in Microsoft's KB.

It seems that SP1 only provides support for 48-bit LBA addressing, but it doesn't actually activate it.  <thanks, Bill... real smart>

You may only need to create a new registry key to get things going (details in the aforementioned KB article).  Check it out and let us know if it works.

And bebop, I don't know, maybe not you, but you can always spot a forum search junkie when suddenly a bunch of four month old threads rise to the top with silly, trival, "Yeah.  That's a good idea!" tacked on at the bottom, or worse, "*bump*".  

[bebop]

Omni:  Whew, had me going for a minute there...but I can stop reading all these posts...really I can, anytime I want....yup, I'm not addicted, no sireee....

Benrad...that tweek just might have been what my techie did, he didn't give me the details...  Good luck on getting that drive up and going.   Bet