Can't get new hard drive to work.

[GeminiZi]

I just purchased a Dell Dimension 4550. I took out the original hard drive and tried to reinstall XP on a new hard drive. After creating a new partition and after formatting the partition to NTFS, this is the message I received: Setup is unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged. Make sure the drive is swithched on and properly connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure you SCSI devices are properly terminated. Consult your computer manual/ SCSI adapter documentation for more info. You must select a different partition for Windows XP. If anyone knows what this means please write back. Thanks!!!!


When I put the original preinstalled XP hard drive back, it works fine. When I turn on the computer with the original drive, a green light turns on on the motherboard by this code CR4G1.

 

[styrafoam]

Try a different utility to format the drive. Maybe try www.madboot.com , this was recommended in another thread recently and I havent personally tried it, but it looks really useful.

 

[ianbergman]

Are you using the supplied Dell install of WinXP on that new hard drive? I can't imagine they put any kind of lock/hardware copy protection in it, but it's always possible I guess..

 

[redbeard1]

What sizes are the two drives? Are you running into the 48 bit size limitation on the new drive? Does the install disk your using have SP1 on it?

This link talks about drive limitations.

MS

 

[whovous]

I hesitate to suggest this, but it worked for me after multiple failed attempts at Ghosting my XP setup onto a RAID 0 pair of drives. Put your original drive back in its usual place, and put the new drive in either as a slave on the same controller or else on the other controller in whatever way works. Open Windows, then go to Explorer, right click on the new drive, and choose Format. It cannot hurt anything, as there is nothing on the new drive, and it just might help. It definitely worked for me. The other thing is to make sure the C partition is made "active."

 

[GeminiZi]

Originally posted by: redbeard1
What sizes are the two drives? Are you running into the 48 bit size limitation on the new drive? Does the install disk your using have SP1 on it?

This link talks about drive limitations.

MS

the factory drive is 30GB ata 100 7200rpm, the new drive that i only want to put in is a 80GB maxtor ata 133 7200rpm, so i don't think i'm running into the 48 bit size limitation on the new drive. the install disk did came preinstalled with sp1 on it.

once i've installed my 80GB hard drive alone in the computer, i pop in the restore cd, and boot from my cd rom. it takes me to the blue installation window, from there i create two partitions, c: drive and d: drive. i then hit enter to install xp in the c: drive. it takes me to the format window which there are two options, either do a quick format, or a full format. I've tried several times choosing the full format option on the c: and d: drives, but it would give me that error message after formatting. I've even tried it on just one partition drive, but it still gives me the error message. after many times of trying, i created two partitions again, c: and d:, this time i chose the quick format option on c: drive, and it worked. so why does it only works on the quick format option? does anyone know why?

thank you for all the help guys. i appreciate it.

 

[GeminiZi]

Bump... Anyone???

 

[Fallen Kell]

That might be your problem right there. You are using a restore disk from Dell. Depending on how they implemented their restore disk, it will only work on the origional equipment (i.e. same model/size hard drive). What you need are some regular windows XP install CD's, not a retore CD...

 

[GeminiZi]

Originally posted by: Fallen Kell
That might be your problem right there. You are using a restore disk from Dell. Depending on how they implemented their restore disk, it will only work on the origional equipment (i.e. same model/size hard drive). What you need are some regular windows XP install CD's, not a retore CD...

the restore cd worked on my own hard drive, i just had to use quick format for some reason, i wouldn't work on the full format option.