NTFS Format failed on SATA drive

[Dr Grumpy]

I've installed a new 160Gb SATA drive on a Sil3112 controller card.

The drive is seen okay and size correct. In disk management I can create
partitions
but when formatting as NTFS, I get "Format failed to complete successfully"
when doing both a quick and long format (long goes to 100% before failed
message) volume is labelled with letter and healthy, but unusuable.
Curiously I am able to create FAT32 formatted partitions. I have had the
same result with drives from two manufacturers, both are recorded as okay by
dos-based drive testing programs.

Any ideas ?

Steve

 

[Roger Parr]

I've installed a new 160Gb SATA drive on a Sil3112 controller card.

The drive is seen okay and size correct. In disk management I can create
partitions
but when formatting as NTFS, I get "Format failed to complete successfully"
when doing both a quick and long format (long goes to 100% before failed
message) volume is labelled with letter and healthy, but unusuable.
Curiously I am able to create FAT32 formatted partitions. I have had the
same result with drives from two manufacturers, both are recorded as okay by
dos-based drive testing programs.

You don't say how you were trying to format (Partition Magic?) or which
service pack you are on, but have you installed the 48bit LBA support
from Microsoft - from memory this is needed for drives over 128GB. I
haven't got a URL handy, but searching the MS support web-site should
soon find it.

HTH

 

[Dr Grumpy]

Apologies for not giving enough details:

Using Win 2000 SP4,
I have added EnableBigLba = 1 to the registry key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters]
but this would not seem to be an issue as the first drive I tried was 120Gb,
with exactly the same symptoms.

I am creating partitions and formatting in Disk Management in the Windows
Computer Management console, have also tried to format from the command
prompt and from explorer.
I have also tried putting the controller card in a different PCI slot.

It would seem to me that if the drive is seen correctly and I can create
partitions and I can format as FAT32, then this suggests that the hardware
is working/interacting okay (? or does it), so this leaves me to think it is
something specific about NTFS - when doing a long format it fails after 100%
presumably when a final something is written to the disk.

Thanks, Steve

PS My system:
ABIT KT7A v1.2, AMD 1.2 Ghz Athlon
Memory 2 x 256 Mb PC 133 Memory
Sound Creative Soundblaster PCI128
Graphics Matrox Millenium G550 G55+MDHA32DD
HDD1 IBM Deskstar 60GXP 20 Gb 7200 rpm (ATA 100)
HDD2 IBM 20Gb 5400 rpm (ATA 100)
DVD-RW LG GSA-4081B DVD Re-writer (IDE)
Generic 1.4 Mb Floppy Disk Drive
Controller Adaptec AHA-2940AU Ultra SCSI Host Adapter
Iomega ZIP 100 Insider (SCSI)
CD-RW Yamaha CRW2100S-VK (SCSI)
HaupPage HaupPage TV Tuner Card
Hayes Accura 5670GB External Speakerphone Modem
InnoVISION EIO DM-8301H SATA Controller card
HDD3 Hitachi Deskstar 160Gb SATA (the problem drive)

 

[Dr Grumpy]

I just had a thought and tried to use Convert on a fat32 volume on the
offending drive from the command prompt, this is what I got:

K:\>convert j: /fs:ntfs /v
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Enter current volume label for drive J: NEW VOLUME
Determining disk space required for file system conversion...
Total disk space: 6233188 KB
Free space on volume: 6219904 KB
Space required for conversion: 41163 KB
Cannot create the elementary file system structures.
The conversion failed.
J: was not converted to ntfs

So why can it do it for fat32 and not for ntfs ?

Steve

Apologies for not giving enough details:

Using Win 2000 SP4,
I have added EnableBigLba = 1 to the registry key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters]
but this would not seem to be an issue as the first drive I tried was 120Gb,
with exactly the same symptoms.

I am creating partitions and formatting in Disk Management in the Windows
Computer Management console, have also tried to format from the command
prompt and from explorer.
I have also tried putting the controller card in a different PCI slot.

It would seem to me that if the drive is seen correctly and I can create
partitions and I can format as FAT32, then this suggests that the hardware
is working/interacting okay (? or does it), so this leaves me to think it is
something specific about NTFS - when doing a long format it fails after 100%
presumably when a final something is written to the disk.

Thanks, Steve

PS My system:
ABIT KT7A v1.2, AMD 1.2 Ghz Athlon
Memory 2 x 256 Mb PC 133 Memory
Sound Creative Soundblaster PCI128
Graphics Matrox Millenium G550 G55+MDHA32DD
HDD1 IBM Deskstar 60GXP 20 Gb 7200 rpm (ATA 100)
HDD2 IBM 20Gb 5400 rpm (ATA 100)
DVD-RW LG GSA-4081B DVD Re-writer (IDE)
Generic 1.4 Mb Floppy Disk Drive
Controller Adaptec AHA-2940AU Ultra SCSI Host Adapter
Iomega ZIP 100 Insider (SCSI)
CD-RW Yamaha CRW2100S-VK (SCSI)
HaupPage HaupPage TV Tuner Card
Hayes Accura 5670GB External Speakerphone Modem
InnoVISION EIO DM-8301H SATA Controller card
HDD3 Hitachi Deskstar 160Gb SATA (the problem drive)

okay

by
You don't say how you were trying to format (Partition Magic?) or which
service pack you are on, but have you installed the 48bit LBA support
from Microsoft - from memory this is needed for drives over 128GB. I
haven't got a URL handy, but searching the MS support web-site should
soon find it.

HTH

 

[Roger Parr]

news:[email protected]...

Resequenced to bottom posting for clarity for others!

Apologies for not giving enough details:

Using Win 2000 SP4,
I have added EnableBigLba = 1 to the registry key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters]
but this would not seem to be an issue as the first drive I tried was 120Gb,
with exactly the same symptoms.

I am creating partitions and formatting in Disk Management in the Windows
Computer Management console, have also tried to format from the command
prompt and from explorer.
I have also tried putting the controller card in a different PCI slot.

It would seem to me that if the drive is seen correctly and I can create
partitions and I can format as FAT32, then this suggests that the hardware
is working/interacting okay (? or does it), so this leaves me to think it is
something specific about NTFS - when doing a long format it fails after 100%
presumably when a final something is written to the disk.

Thanks, Steve

PS My system:
ABIT KT7A v1.2, AMD 1.2 Ghz Athlon
Memory 2 x 256 Mb PC 133 Memory
Sound Creative Soundblaster PCI128
Graphics Matrox Millenium G550 G55+MDHA32DD
HDD1 IBM Deskstar 60GXP 20 Gb 7200 rpm (ATA 100)
HDD2 IBM 20Gb 5400 rpm (ATA 100)
DVD-RW LG GSA-4081B DVD Re-writer (IDE)
Generic 1.4 Mb Floppy Disk Drive
Controller Adaptec AHA-2940AU Ultra SCSI Host Adapter
Iomega ZIP 100 Insider (SCSI)
CD-RW Yamaha CRW2100S-VK (SCSI)
HaupPage HaupPage TV Tuner Card
Hayes Accura 5670GB External Speakerphone Modem
InnoVISION EIO DM-8301H SATA Controller card
HDD3 Hitachi Deskstar 160Gb SATA (the problem drive)

Steve,
About the only suggestion I have left is that your BIOS may need to be
upgraded. A quick trawl of the news groups shows that at some point
(about 2003??) Abit released BIOS upgrades which supported disks of
160Gb. I may be jumping to a wrong conclusion, but the fact that your
other drives are 20GB each suggests it may be an "old" system. A check
of the Abit web-site should reveal the latest BIOS - and probably some
history.
Quite why it "works" for FAT, I have no idea, but maybe it is only
giving the illusion of working - I would be very cautious about using
the new drive until you have got to the bottom of this problem.

Regards,

 

[Dr Grumpy]

news:[email protected]...

Resequenced to bottom posting for clarity for others!

okay
by

Apologies for not giving enough details:

Using Win 2000 SP4,
I have added EnableBigLba = 1 to the registry key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters]
but this would not seem to be an issue as the first drive I tried was 120Gb,
with exactly the same symptoms.

I am creating partitions and formatting in Disk Management in the Windows
Computer Management console, have also tried to format from the command
prompt and from explorer.
I have also tried putting the controller card in a different PCI slot.

It would seem to me that if the drive is seen correctly and I can create
partitions and I can format as FAT32, then this suggests that the hardware
is working/interacting okay (? or does it), so this leaves me to think it is
something specific about NTFS - when doing a long format it fails after 100%
presumably when a final something is written to the disk.

Thanks, Steve

PS My system:
ABIT KT7A v1.2, AMD 1.2 Ghz Athlon
Memory 2 x 256 Mb PC 133 Memory
Sound Creative Soundblaster PCI128
Graphics Matrox Millenium G550 G55+MDHA32DD
HDD1 IBM Deskstar 60GXP 20 Gb 7200 rpm (ATA 100)
HDD2 IBM 20Gb 5400 rpm (ATA 100)
DVD-RW LG GSA-4081B DVD Re-writer (IDE)
Generic 1.4 Mb Floppy Disk Drive
Controller Adaptec AHA-2940AU Ultra SCSI Host Adapter
Iomega ZIP 100 Insider (SCSI)
CD-RW Yamaha CRW2100S-VK (SCSI)
HaupPage HaupPage TV Tuner Card
Hayes Accura 5670GB External Speakerphone Modem
InnoVISION EIO DM-8301H SATA Controller card
HDD3 Hitachi Deskstar 160Gb SATA (the problem drive)

Steve,
About the only suggestion I have left is that your BIOS may need to be
upgraded. A quick trawl of the news groups shows that at some point
(about 2003??) Abit released BIOS upgrades which supported disks of
160Gb. I may be jumping to a wrong conclusion, but the fact that your
other drives are 20GB each suggests it may be an "old" system. A check
of the Abit web-site should reveal the latest BIOS - and probably some
history.
Quite why it "works" for FAT, I have no idea, but maybe it is only
giving the illusion of working - I would be very cautious about using
the new drive until you have got to the bottom of this problem.

Regards,

Thanks for suggestion Roger,

I upgraded the BIOS some time ago to a version which has 48bit LBA support,
but there does appear to be one later version, I will try that next, but not
very hopeful that it will make any difference.

Steve

 

[Roger Parr]

news:[email protected]...

Resequenced to bottom posting for clarity for others!

In message <[email protected]>, Dr Grumpy
I've installed a new 160Gb SATA drive on a Sil3112 controller card.

The drive is seen okay and size correct. In disk management I can create
partitions
but when formatting as NTFS, I get "Format failed to complete
successfully"
when doing both a quick and long format (long goes to 100% before failed
message) volume is labelled with letter and healthy, but unusuable.
Curiously I am able to create FAT32 formatted partitions. I have had the
same result with drives from two manufacturers, both are recorded as okay
by
dos-based drive testing programs.

You don't say how you were trying to format (Partition Magic?) or which
service pack you are on, but have you installed the 48bit LBA support
from Microsoft - from memory this is needed for drives over 128GB. I
haven't got a URL handy, but searching the MS support web-site should
soon find it.

HTH

Apologies for not giving enough details:

Using Win 2000 SP4,
I have added EnableBigLba = 1 to the registry key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters]
but this would not seem to be an issue as the first drive I tried was 120Gb,
with exactly the same symptoms.

I am creating partitions and formatting in Disk Management in the Windows
Computer Management console, have also tried to format from the command
prompt and from explorer.
I have also tried putting the controller card in a different PCI slot.

It would seem to me that if the drive is seen correctly and I can create
partitions and I can format as FAT32, then this suggests that the hardware
is working/interacting okay (? or does it), so this leaves me to think it is
something specific about NTFS - when doing a long format it fails after 100%
presumably when a final something is written to the disk.

Thanks, Steve

PS My system:
ABIT KT7A v1.2, AMD 1.2 Ghz Athlon
Memory 2 x 256 Mb PC 133 Memory
Sound Creative Soundblaster PCI128
Graphics Matrox Millenium G550 G55+MDHA32DD
HDD1 IBM Deskstar 60GXP 20 Gb 7200 rpm (ATA 100)
HDD2 IBM 20Gb 5400 rpm (ATA 100)
DVD-RW LG GSA-4081B DVD Re-writer (IDE)
Generic 1.4 Mb Floppy Disk Drive
Controller Adaptec AHA-2940AU Ultra SCSI Host Adapter
Iomega ZIP 100 Insider (SCSI)
CD-RW Yamaha CRW2100S-VK (SCSI)
HaupPage HaupPage TV Tuner Card
Hayes Accura 5670GB External Speakerphone Modem
InnoVISION EIO DM-8301H SATA Controller card
HDD3 Hitachi Deskstar 160Gb SATA (the problem drive)

Steve,
About the only suggestion I have left is that your BIOS may need to be
upgraded. A quick trawl of the news groups shows that at some point
(about 2003??) Abit released BIOS upgrades which supported disks of
160Gb. I may be jumping to a wrong conclusion, but the fact that your
other drives are 20GB each suggests it may be an "old" system. A check
of the Abit web-site should reveal the latest BIOS - and probably some
history.
Quite why it "works" for FAT, I have no idea, but maybe it is only
giving the illusion of working - I would be very cautious about using
the new drive until you have got to the bottom of this problem.

Regards,

Thanks for suggestion Roger,

I upgraded the BIOS some time ago to a version which has 48bit LBA support,
but there does appear to be one later version, I will try that next, but not
very hopeful that it will make any difference.

Curiouser and curiouser. Some final desperate thoughts:

1) jumpers setting on the drive. A lot of drives have jumper settings
which "clip" the drive to a smaller size - to get round BIOS
limitations. If, by some mischance, you have got these set to some
strange invalid combination......

2) I have two of what I think is think is the same 160GB HD. Try
downloading the Drive Fitness Test from the Hitachi web-site -
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm.
Most of the tests are non-destructive and should report back on the
status of the drive itself (I did have a faulty one on purchase)

3) Have you got the latest SATA drivers for the controller?

(Just as an off-topic comment, I have an Abit NFS-7 V2 motherboard with
an SiI 3112 controller. I have had problems with data corruption, which
I think are associated with shut-down, when Windows 200 doesn't issue a
flush command (as the drives aren't IDE) and there isn't sufficient
elapsed time to flush the HD cache before power drops. The latest BIOS
and drivers are essential. I also force the swapfile to be cleared at
shutdown, which purges all the useful data from the HD cache.)

4) Do you have anything like Partition Magic? If so, have you tried
running it from diskettes (eliminating Windows 2000 from the equation)
and seeing if it will NTFS format the drive?

Apart from those suggestions, as puzzled as you are!

Regards,

 

[DL]

There have been reported data corruption problems, if largelba is enabled,
to utilise the unused hd space with another partition, after having
previously formated an initial partition of eg the max 137gb.
ie if a new install of Win the win should be slipstreamed to include
largelba prior to any format, or if a slave disk it should only be formated
after largelba is enabled
There has also been some ng's discussion as to using sata drivers from
Silicon Image site as oppossed to mobo SI drivers
David

 

[Dr Grumpy]

Curiouser and curiouser. Some final desperate thoughts:

1) jumpers setting on the drive. A lot of drives have jumper settings
which "clip" the drive to a smaller size - to get round BIOS
limitations. If, by some mischance, you have got these set to some
strange invalid combination......

2) I have two of what I think is think is the same 160GB HD. Try
downloading the Drive Fitness Test from the Hitachi web-site -
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm.
Most of the tests are non-destructive and should report back on the
status of the drive itself (I did have a faulty one on purchase)

3) Have you got the latest SATA drivers for the controller?

(Just as an off-topic comment, I have an Abit NFS-7 V2 motherboard with
an SiI 3112 controller. I have had problems with data corruption, which
I think are associated with shut-down, when Windows 200 doesn't issue a
flush command (as the drives aren't IDE) and there isn't sufficient
elapsed time to flush the HD cache before power drops. The latest BIOS
and drivers are essential. I also force the swapfile to be cleared at
shutdown, which purges all the useful data from the HD cache.)

4) Do you have anything like Partition Magic? If so, have you tried
running it from diskettes (eliminating Windows 2000 from the equation)
and seeing if it will NTFS format the drive?

Apart from those suggestions, as puzzled as you are!

Regards,

Well I'm still puzzled too and so frustrated:

The drive doesn't have any jumpers.
I have run the Hitachi drive fitness test and it reports okay for both quick
and advanced.
Have also used to dft to erase the mbr.
Have upgraded mobo to latest bios, and using latest controller drivers.
Clean booted into Acronis Partition Expert and able to create partition and
format NTFS vol.
But when re-booted into Win2K, chkdsk reports "disk structure is corrupt and
unreadable",
Output from chkdsk run at cmd prompt:
C:\>chkdsk l:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is D3P3.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 0.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 1.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 2.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 4.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 5.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 6.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 7.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 8.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 10.
File verification completed.

Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode.

C:\>chkdsk l: /r
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is D3P3.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 0.

C:\>
Because I haven't been able to format as NTFS, I have never go to the point
of getting page file corruptions on shut down.

I can't think of much else to do - I have also tried playing with some of
the BIOS settings relating to PCI without any effect. No conflicts etc are
reported by the OS.

Steve

 

[Roger Parr]

Well I'm still puzzled too and so frustrated:

The drive doesn't have any jumpers.
I have run the Hitachi drive fitness test and it reports okay for both quick
and advanced.
Have also used to dft to erase the mbr.
Have upgraded mobo to latest bios, and using latest controller drivers.
Clean booted into Acronis Partition Expert and able to create partition and
format NTFS vol.
But when re-booted into Win2K, chkdsk reports "disk structure is corrupt and
unreadable",
Output from chkdsk run at cmd prompt:
C:\>chkdsk l:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is D3P3.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 0.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 1.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 2.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 4.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 5.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 6.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 7.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 8.
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 10.
File verification completed.

Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode.

C:\>chkdsk l: /r
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is D3P3.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
Truncating badly linked attribute records
from file record segment 0.

C:\>
Because I haven't been able to format as NTFS, I have never go to the point
of getting page file corruptions on shut down.

I can't think of much else to do - I have also tried playing with some of
the BIOS settings relating to PCI without any effect. No conflicts etc are
reported by the OS.

I am afraid I too am rapidly running out of ideas!

I don't know the Acronis tool, as I have Partition Magic 8. Is there
any equivalent of PartitionInfo - which gives very detailed information
about each partition, which PM requires in case of a problem? If you
haven't already done so, it might be worth searching newsgroups for any
hits on PartitionExpert and large disks.
Are you running the latest version of PartitionExpert? It might be
worth contacting their support system to see if they can suggest
anything.