[astrophysicist]

I recently attached a 9 GB SCSI drive to my system. When I load Windows XP Pro and go to Disk Management, I get the pop-up screen saying there is a new drive attached. When I go to initialize the drive I get this message:

"An unexpected error has occurred. Check the System Event Log for more information on the error. Close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer."

I have done all the options in the last sentence but this did not fix the issue. Checking the System Event Log, I get this description:

"Unspecified error(80004005). For more information, see Help and Support Center at [url="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp""]http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp"[/url]

I clicked that link but all it told me was there was no information in their databases regarding this error. I have searched online for this error under a similar situation and found nothing. Any ideas?

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i've found a couple of references to a similar problem with usb drives. they say that sometimes it's a problem with the enclosure. sorry if this doesn't help

[dsenette]

i've found a couple of references to a similar problem with usb drives. they say that sometimes it's a problem with the enclosure. sorry if this doesn't help

[astrophysicist]

Yeah, all I could find regarding that error was with respect to ASP files and database errors. What do you mean by the "enclosure"? I'm trying a different SCSI drive attached the same way, we shall see if it differs.

[dsenette]

well...they were all external usb drives. it's a little known fact that with drives that a screw too tight or loose can cause operating issues (like tightening the back right mounting screw on an internal floppy drive too tight will cause a BSOD in windows)

[astrophysicist]

Right, but I don't think that is the case with this. I just hooked up different SCSI drive to the system. I had an older cable which only supported slower data transfers than what the drive could handle. I had no problem with initializing this drive, but the write speeds were extremely low, 16MB/s for a SCSI 3 drive. I took out the old cord, and replaced it with a new cord able to handle up to 320MB/s. Now I am getting the same error as before.

There is a BIOS utility for our built in SCSI controller that allows me to do a low level format and also check the drive mapping - if there are errors it is supposed to fix them. I have run both of these options and this has had no effect on the error.