SATA Drive Unstable ?

[12quidkidinnit]

Anyone know if there's a way I can make a computer recognise my SATA 200Gb hard drive.

The operating system XP Pro (SP2) is on an IDE 80Gb drive, the SATA is used for data storage. It was fine last night, but today when I try to access it, I get a message saying,

"The disk in drive C is not formatted. Do you want to format it now ?"

This has happened twice before, and I know I can just do a quick format and it will be 'useable' again, but it will show as being empty, whereas there is about 110Gb of data on there. I do have it backed up, but if there is a way of avoiding having to mess about formatting it and then saving everything on there again, that would be much less aggro.

I don't claim to know a great deal about these things, but I seem to remember hearing that this can happen if the partition becomes corrupted.

Anyway, if anyone can advise me of a way to make Windows able to read this drive without losing the data it contains, I will be very grateful.

Thanks in advance :crybaby:

[12quidkidinnit]

Maybe no-one else has had this problem. Either way, that SATA drive is going in the bin (3rd time unlucky), to be replaced with an IDE drive. At least I've never had any hassle with them.http://www.jiggyjigg.com/upload/files/9/rolleyes10.gif

[MiniMan13]

SATA will have nothing to do with the formatting of the drive, lets start off with the basic's what motherboard do you have, and if you know, what chipset/SATA controller are you using?

I use SATA drives all the time with no issues.

[pixelated]

You're correct that the drive bitmap is probably being corrupted. Lots of possible causes and recovery techniques - none fun. You can try opening my computer, RIGHT clicking on the drive, click properties, then tools, then error-checking (check now). This will force a scan of the bitmap and test of the file linking structure - you might get lucky. Also check your anti-virus software is up to date - a very common cause of this type problem . . .

Good Luck!

[ChuckS]

Also, if you continue to have problems like this check out Major Geeks, it a website like DVXUser for PC's. http://forums.majorgeeks.com/

They offer great advice.

[morten]

I had a simmilar problem. turned out the SATA cable was busted. once replaced I have had zero problems (no crashes for the last 2.8 years)

mor10