Cannot format PATA hard disk

[tochiro]

Hello,

I recently bought a Maxtor 80Gb Pata internal hard disk on which I
wanted to install windows XP. The PC boots on the CD-drive with Win
XP, then I choose to format the hard disk (one partition), then the
horizontal yellow bar fills in to the end but I get a message saying
the hard disk could not be formatted.

Any idea why? Thank you very much.

Cheers

 

[John John]

If you created a partition in the unallocated space and it can't be
formated maybe the hard disk is defective. It does happen that brand
new disks are defective out of the box. I would ask Maxtor for an RMA.
Go to their tech support web site and get a diagnostic utility for the
drive and see if the disk is good or not. Is the disk directly
connected to one of the IDE connectors on the motherboard or is it
connected on another controller, like a PCI card?

John

 

[tochiro]

If you created a partition in the unallocated space and it can't be
formated maybe the hard disk is defective. It does happen that brand
new disks are defective out of the box. I would ask Maxtor for an RMA.
Go to their tech support web site and get a diagnostic utility for the
drive and see if the disk is good or not. Is the disk directly
connected to one of the IDE connectors on the motherboard or is it
connected on another controller, like a PCI card?

Thank you for your message

The HD is connected to one of the connectors on the ribbon cable.
Because my PC is 7 years old I wondered if it could be because my
motherboard does not support this type of HD...?

 

[John John]

Thank you for your message

The HD is connected to one of the connectors on the ribbon cable.
Because my PC is 7 years old I wondered if it could be because my
motherboard does not support this type of HD...?

It could be, the size of the disk may cause issues with older
motherboards, I have seen this in the past. Is the disk properly
recognized in the BIOS? See if a BIOS update is available for your
motherboard. Also, make sure that the disk is connected at the proper
connector on the cable and that the jumpers on the disk are set at the
proper position, Master, Slave, Cable Select, you probably want the disk
to be at the master position on the primary IDE controller. Your
computer may or may not support Cable Select, if the jumper is on CS you
might want to move it to Master.

John