[cygnus12]

Hi everyone! Hopefully someone has a solution to this mess.

Here's the backstory:
I recently bought a Western Digital, Caviar 500gb SATA drive to replace my 200gb drive. I transferred some files from the old 200gig onto the new drive and did some cleaning up on the desktop, nothing major. Then while trying to download some updates the computer sort of froze. Actually, I could still move the mouse but everything else was going slowly. So I waited, but nothing happened, so I had to power it off. I was able to get back into Windows XP fine, but decided to run chkdsk, just in case the power off did something.

Here's where things go wrong:
I let chkdsk run and when I come back I had a nice error that read "cannot load windows/???/system" (or something similar.) I'm thinking that CHKDSK deleted some system files. That's one thing I'd like to figure out but then the bigger problem arose. I tried to use the HP Recovery CDs to recover the missing files but I got the message "cannot create new user partition!" Huh?! So I booted up XP from another drive and checked the SATA drive, when I clicked on the drive, a box popped up and read "Drive is not formatted, would you like to format?" Uh sure, why not. So I did, but I still can't get the HP Recovery to work; I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that it may have something to do with this:



It says my total capacity is 465gb, yet there is obviously 500gb available on the drive. There is also a mysterious 79mb taking up space, even though I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone have any idea what happened and more importantly, how to get everything back to normal? I am going crazy trying to figure out what happened...

Thanks,
Brian

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Here's the thing, whenever u get a new harddrive and format it g.b's get used to store drive information and many other things, eg. making it smaller. Like what happened with 500gb to 465gb happens to every harddrive whenever formatted. With me I have a 80gb drive and when formatted = 74gb..

Also the 79mb is prolly whats left of something u tried to delete off that drive because on every harddrive there is also a temp recycle bin. The temp recycle bin on harddrives allow u to restore lost or deleted files from command promp in windows.....

As with the HP Recorvery CD i never have messed with those so I can't help ya. If u read about harddrives a bit u can get so more information about how they work in windows and what happens, but hope this helps a little bit.....

[Bobbydoo8]

Here's the thing, whenever u get a new harddrive and format it g.b's get used to store drive information and many other things, eg. making it smaller. Like what happened with 500gb to 465gb happens to every harddrive whenever formatted. With me I have a 80gb drive and when formatted = 74gb..

Also the 79mb is prolly whats left of something u tried to delete off that drive because on every harddrive there is also a temp recycle bin. The temp recycle bin on harddrives allow u to restore lost or deleted files from command promp in windows.....

As with the HP Recorvery CD i never have messed with those so I can't help ya. If u read about harddrives a bit u can get so more information about how they work in windows and what happens, but hope this helps a little bit.....

[Doby]

The first thing you should do is go to the WD website and download their diagnostic tools and check the drive.
If the drive checks as good then explain are you trying to use the hp recovery disks to install windows on the new drive and use it as your boot drive?

[cygnus12]

Sorry that I didn't reply sooner,

I actually downloaded the WD diagnostic yesterday and the drive failed the quick and extended tests (saying that the disk had "too many bad sectors") along with failing SMART. I tried to use the diagnostic to zero fill the drive in hopes of starting completely anew but it ran into all kinds of errors. I guess it's safe to say that I got a bad drive! I filled out an RMA yesterday to send the drive back for a new one.

This is actually the second time that I've had to send a new drive back; the first time was 3-4 years ago with a 200gb 'ticking' Seagate that came with the computer.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Edited by cygnus12, 21 January 2008 - 08:07 PM.

[Doby]

Your welcome