How to format an ex-raided drive?

[Buickbeast]

Hey guys, I had a RAID-O setup with a SIL PCI RAID card. I broke it up so that I could use the drives on separate machines. Now the problem is that no computer program will recognize them. Here is what I've gone through.

Western Digital extended test: passed
Western Digital write zeros to whole HD: completed
DBan: general error
Partition Magic: error #88; googled it and found it meaning "no drive"
Windows XP install as the only HD, full format, gets most of the way through and then says could not format drive.
Inside Windows XP: It will see a unformatted drive in disk management, gets most of the way through then says could not format drive.

When raiding drives does is mess with the MBR or other files that is causing this? How do I correct it without hooking them back into the RAID card?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

honestly, I'm not sure why you are having problems. Any time that I have destroyed an array and reformatted the drive, I just went to computer manager and reformatted the drive. If you think it may be the MBR, try the command "fdisk /mbr" to clear the master boot record (from the DOS prompt).

 

[mindless1]

I too have often pulled drives and had no problem partitioning and formatting, including some that were formerly on a Silicon Image PCI Raid card. Nothing the former raid state would have written to the drive should be causing this but ignoring that, since the WD zero-fill completed, there should be no trace left of the former RAID data/state.

Therefore I would suspect a drive problem that the WD Extended test didn't find, or a more general cable, connector, or power problem. This assumes you don't have a drive single/master/slave jumper problem but I'd have thought that would effect enumeration and access before the point at which the process fails.

 

[Buickbeast]

Well, I figured out the problem. I guess the HD or the IDE controller didn't like the jumper settings I had. I disconnected my burner, pulled the jumper off and the HD formated fine in Windows. That is one of the things I do not like with newer motherboards only having 1 IDE controller.