Hi Irena,

Are you using a Dell restore disk, a Retail or OEM version of XP Pro? Dell
uses Seagate hard drives and I'm almost certain yours is a Seagate also. Did
it have an Install/Utility CD with it? If so, try formatting with it. You
can download Seagate's DiscWizard here:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

Here's a link to Dell's Support page on Hard Drive Problems:
http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/opgx270/en/ug/solve.htm#1239793

You don't need a special driver, Windows will take care of that. The "Dell"
name only means you pay more for it, the same as all other manufacturer's
parts. Though it's not likely to happen, you can't rule out the possibility
you have a bad hard drive.

For what it's worth, you could save about half of Dell's price by purchasing
the drive at your nearest CompUSA or Circuit City.

Sven Swanson, Sr.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Irena Thomas" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 12:54 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] SATA disk format problem


Hi All,

We got a replacement of 120Gb SATA HD. The setup recognizes it as SATA 0,
windows xp pro starts to format the drive and fails to complete the
process, giving the long list of reasons, like incorrect disk format,
check the connectors, disk damaged. This is a new disk from dell, we are
trying to replace the old one which started to produce 'disk read error,
press alt-ctrl-del to restart' on every boot attempt. The machine is Dell
Optiplex GX270.

Do we need a special SATA driver? If yes, where can we get it? Dell site
has nothing listed for that particular model. Help!

Irena.

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