Re: Large Hard Drives refuse to format despite 48-bit LBA support

Bloody Hell!!! I have been trying to figure out my Delayed Write
problem since earlier in the year and recently the problem has driven
me nuts - My BIOS was correctly updated and could see my 200Gig HDD;
Win XP SP1 and SP2 were loaded; Reg48bitLBA was enabled - but my PC
still refused to recognise anything more than 137Gig. Until I happened
upon this thread today - so I became a member so I could post my thanks
to Snufkin for solving my problem. I would be interested in knowing
why IAA interfered with this issue, so if anyone can enlighten me, I
would be grateful.

Thanks again.


"Snufkin"
anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com
wrote
in message
news:aa0a01c48877$9eb0a900[/i][/color][/i][/color]
$a501280a@phx.gbl...--
I am now on my second identical hard drive
which
has
exhibited the same strange behavior:

I am attempting to install a 200GB Seagate
hard
drive on a
computer running Windows XP SP2, with a
P4G8X
Deluxe
motherboard.

Windows sees the entire hard drive--all--
185--
GB of
it. If I
attempt to format (NTFS), either through
disk
management
or by right clicking on the drive, the
format
plods
along
for a couple of hours, reaches 100%...and
then
reports
that the format could not complete.

If I attempt to access the drive, Windows
informs
me that
the drive is not formatted (RAW), and asks
if I
wish to
format it.

As an experiment, I partitioned and
formatted the
first
100GB of the drive. This worked fine. I--
then--
partitioned
and attempted to format the other 85GB.--
The--
format
failed
at 100%.

If I boot to a seagate floppy and format
from
there, the
format completes succesfully, and Windows
sees
the
drive
as fully formatted NTFS. HOWEVER, after
writing a
few
gigabytes of data to test it, I started
receiving
I/O
Errors trying to read some files.--
Checkdisk--
invariably
failed to complete, usually at 100%.

The first time this happened, I assumed--
the--
drive
was
faulty and returned it for replacement.--
The--
replacement is
giving identical results.

I initially tried this all on SP1, which--
of--
course
has 48-
bit LBA support. I upgraded to SP2 in the
hopes
that would
fix things, but the upgrade made no
difference.

I have swapped ide cables, changed the
drive from
slave to
master to cable select master/slave and--
back--
again,
and
swapped ide channels. Nothing changed the
behavior
of the
drive.

My motherboard also supports 48-bit LBA,
and has
the
newest BIOS. Another older drive
substituted in
place of
the new one functions correctly. I can--
only--
assume
that
this computer is having issues formatting
above
137GB, and
having mostly eliminated hardware as the
culprit,
it seems
Windows must be glitching somehow.

Anyone have any ideas?