Wd 1600 avvs sata format

graham7773

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I bought a new computer with a single wd sata 160gb hard drive and no operating system. How do I format the drive to ntfs? Windows XP Home will not load. It gets to the contract and hangs. Is there a problem putting XP on a sata drive?
 
sounds like your having hardware issues maybe ram. google memtest86+ burn it to a cd and run 10 passes do not change any settings run it the way it comes. it will take about 8 hrs or so to run it after you do that post back here and let me know if there were any errors and we can go from there. also check the bios make sure it is reading the hard drive
 
Thanks for your reply. My computer cannot find the hard drive, the computer is new, the WD 160gb sata hard drive is 07/07/2009 but unused according to the person I bought it from. I tried downloading Memtest+.4. and just got confused, gave up after 5 tries. I am using XP Home but cannot load it as it says it cannot find the hard drive. By the way, I have a WD 80gb which XP also cannot find
 
The SATA controllers in BIOS are probably set to RAID or AHCI instead of ATA/IDE/Legacy. Without special drivers XP cannot see hard drives that are attached to a controller set to RAID or AHCI. Check your bios to see what it's configured for.
 
try unplugging the hard-drives power + data cable and then connect back again, Maybe one of the cables is lose
 
JCB, the data cable seems to be a little loose but I do not know how much free play is OK where the data cable goes into the slot on the back of the sata hdd. I turned the cable around as it fits both ways on drive and mobo. Can the connectors be tightened or just replace the cable with a new one?

One more thing, I downloaded the boot disc, unzipped it and my other computer asks me if it should go on the net to find a program to open the unzipped files. What next? Thanks in advance for any helpfull info re this. Or is there a program in XP that I can open it with so it can be used?
 
Those type of hard drives are shipped inside virginmedia cable boxes. If thats were your friend got it then it isnt even formatted correctly and wont be picked up.
partition-tool.com has free software that will see the drive, you can then create a logical drive and format it with a drive letter (which I assume is missing and why its invisible) :cool:
Sorry if this reply comes too late for you
 
If the bios is not reading the hdd then he can't format it even with a boot disc. I would sugest resetting the bios to default and see if that helps. that will set the bios to ide/sata/legacy. if this does not help hook the hdd up to a different machine and see if it reads it. if it does than you may have a bad mobo and I would sugest buying a pci sata raid card. If the other machine does not read the drive then you may have a bad hdd. try the reset and the other pc if that don't work post back and we will go from there
 
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