Formatting NTFS problem....

Eye

last week i got 2 new hdd's, 1x 160Gb maxtor drive and 1x 200Gb Seagate Baracude both S-ATA drives 8Mb cache and 7200rpm.

Anyways, partitioned formated and installed win xp pro onto the first drive the maxtor drive no problems, setting up a dual boot system so started the same process on the Seagate drive. Partitioned, formated and went to install windows xp pro again and this is where is all goes pair shaped.

Ok, i select the raid drivers needed for the S-ata on my DFI lanparty NFII Ultra B board and pop in the disk with the drivers, next windows trys copying the setup files from the cd to the hdd. it'll read maybe 5 or 6% at a time and then the cd drive stops and the hdd activity lights comes on and stays on for upto 90 secs before reading anymore from the cd, this goes on and on reading anywhere from 5% to 15% at a time but it never actually gets all the way to 100% usually stops around 77% or last time i think it was 93% and all activity ceases

So from there i went to the Seagate website and downloaded Seatools the diagnostic program and did a quick scan on the drive which showed the drive was okay but there was errors with the NTFS file structure :-\

Next i tried resetting the NTFS by repartitioning in windows and trying installing xp again, next i tried letting the xp pro cd format and partition the drive, after all those failed i went to the seagate tools and used their very own utility to repartition and format in ntfs but again the same thing happens during the installation. last thing i tried was repartitioning the drive with fat32 limiting the drive to 137Gb but again no joy. when each of these failed to get xp pro installed fully i went back and let the seagate tools do a complete check of the drive, after almost 13 hrs scanning all 400million sectors it can up clean apart from the NTFS file structure.

Is the drive screwed or can this be sorted out? Any and all suggestions greatly appreciated as this is doing my head in.

silverside

Why do you need to set up a dual boot? That sounds like a lot of hassle.
Maybe the BIOS on your motherboard only supports one boot drive?

my advice is boot from the maxtor, leave the seagate unplugged till after boot up. Install all the seagate SATA software onto the maxtor so maxtor XP can see the seagate as a secondary drive.

Then plug in the seagate, go into disk management under administrative tools, remove all the partitions, and reformat the drive. does it work as a data drive? if so maybe there is some clash between your motherboard and the seagata SATA boot bios, or between the seagate boot bios and the maxtor boot bios.

maybe you've done all this?

Eye

it is alot of hassle but it's the way i've had this pc setup for a long time with dual booting, my dad does alot of photo work so he needs one hdd full of editing apps and i'm a gamer so i don't want all that crap running or have to turn it off so i setup xp on a seperate drive the way i like it.

i have already tried it as a storage drive but i get similar problems when trying to write files to the disk in that it will copy from the sourse then pause for a little bit then copy some more....i'm guessing this is due to the fact that the NTFS is corrupt and if it was alright then the problem would go away.

tbh i'm regretting ever buying that seagate drive, should have stuck with aanother maxtor, 5 other maxtor drives....never any problem first time i get a seagate and bam this happens *sigh*

Stephen

Tried it in a different PC?

silverside

Well if you remove the partitions then put them back again (by doing a full format) there shouldn't be any trace of the original problem left, so if the problem still happens it is either a bad drive or dodgy drivers.

I agree with the suggestion of testing it in another PC. But maybe you don't need all the hassle and can just get another drive, despite the additional expense??

Capt'n Midnight

One option is to setup an NTFS partition of LESS than 8GB - so it's up and running quickly. Then back it up and then expand the NTFS into free space..

Eye

cheers for the suggestions all, unfortunatly my other pc ain't got S-ATA so can't try it in that and don't know anyone near me that has :-\

might try the 8gb partition later on that Capt Midnight suggested although i don't see how it's gonna work since creating any ntfs so far have all failed but at this stage i'll try almost anything :-\

doubt it's the drivers as i have used them on the new s-ata maxtor drive and they worked fine, me thinks it may be the drive damn seagate....damn them to hell!!!