SATA 1.5TB Problems..

[coxmaster]

Yesterday i picked up a Seagate 1.5TB SATA drive. It installed and was detected no problem. The problem happened when i tried to format it. Windows refused to format part of it. Seagate said to use their tool (so i did) and it worked just fine. I assumed it was fine, and proceeded to use it.

Today i decide to actually test the drive.. I ran the Error scan in HD Tune and got this... http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/9023/tunevv4.jpg

So i decided to run a chkdsk /r and here is what i got: http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/635/chkss6.jpg


Does that mean that part of the drive is dead? If so i'll just take it back to Microcenter and swap it out i guess.

The drive is writeable, no problems at all there. I even have Windows 7 beta installed on it already. Windows shows the entire partition, so is it really dead?

 

[nickbits]

Does it make any odd noises? Looks to me like one of the platters is bad. You have about 26% of the drive shown as bad and that is roughly the size of 1 platter.

 

[coxmaster]

Ya thats what i thought. Makes no noise at all.. According to seagate the problem is common (and fixable) using their Seatools application. However, Seatools doesnt detect my harddrive(s) both of which are Seagate.. I might just have to try the dos version of Seatools.

 

[Accord99]

Do you have the latest BIOS for your MB?

 

[coxmaster]

yep, bios is updated and showing all the space. Right now im running the long test with seatools dos.

 

[coxmaster]

Well the test ran last night for about 6 hours (as i slept) and it passed completely. That is the most thorough HD test i have found, and for it to pass that makes me think it is actually working fine. Now why wont it format the remaining 380GB?

 

[coxmaster]

Talked to my A+ Teacher.. she seems to think its a size issue with windows or something. Is that possible/true?

If nothing else works, i'll be returning to Microcenter tonight/tomorrow to swap for a new 1.5TB. If i get another defective, i'll downgrade to the cheaper (more stable) 1TB. I would still like to hold onto 1.5TB though

 

[coxmaster]

Wow, stupid reason but now it works. Nvidia chipset drivers created the problem.. Everything formatted and partitioned (passed the test also) just fine now!