Hi, I am using XPSP2 Pro and I'm having an issue installing an additional hard drive intended to be used for data only (no OS). The drive is a brand new Seagate 500GB internal/SATA, and I am trying to format the drive NTFS with the default cluster size. For some reason the formatting will get to roughly 50% and an alarm goes off on my Abit NF7 mobo. I also get a small "Logical Disc Manager: The format did not complete successfully" notification box from Windows. FWIW, Both the WD Raptor drive with the OS and the new Seagate drive are on a Highpoint Rocketraid 1540 PCI controller card that I have been using for 4 years now. Any ideas what could be causing the formatting problem, and what could be causing my mobo's alarm to go off? I do not want to jump to any conclusions and have this drive RMA'd just yet (although this could be the case).

Thanks for any input.

You can always test the drive with the Seagate diagnostics utility. Needs a non-RAID SATA controller though.The JBOD mode on your Highpoint may not be enough.

You do have the latest drivers and BIOS for your controller card?

Yup, I have tried the Seatools CD and the controller is the problem. Won't recognize the drive at all.

As far as the driver/bios update it appears that v.2.06s is the most recent but the Highpoint site has a broken link for it. Any place else I should try to find this? I've been looking and no luck yet.

TIA

definitely a driver issue.

see this for more clues: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic36678.html