I have an older IDE harddrive, formatted NTFS, that was used as a backup data store in a computer I've retired. It has never had an OS installed on it -- strictly files and data. I want to format it and give it to a friend whose harddrive has started making noises. I jumpered it for Master, attached it to the secondary IDE connector on an old machine running Windows XP here in the lab -- I did say it was IDE. I can explore the folders and files on it just fine, even saved to the main harddrive some files I thought I might want again.
When I try to format it I get an error message Windows cannot format this drive. Close any programs that might be using it etc. I even tried in safe mode with the same error box. Nothing is using the drive, it's contents are not being displayed. I have done similar reformats on old drives more times than I can remember, but this one I cannot format. I've rebooted several times, written files to the drive just to make sure it is working -- reading and writing files that is. But the Damn thing won't format -- fast or full format.
Any ideas?
When I try to format it I get an error message Windows cannot format this drive. Close any programs that might be using it etc. I even tried in safe mode with the same error box. Nothing is using the drive, it's contents are not being displayed. I have done similar reformats on old drives more times than I can remember, but this one I cannot format. I've rebooted several times, written files to the drive just to make sure it is working -- reading and writing files that is. But the Damn thing won't format -- fast or full format.
Any ideas?
