Bad SATA drive?

[jarvis]

Windows setup has been failing to copy files during a fresh install on a new machine. I'm not sure if the problem is the CD or the HDD. I'm leaning towards the HDD because it fails at different times in the setup with different files. It has failed at 8%, 55% and 89%.

Asus A8V
Athlon 64 3000+
2x512 Dual Channel DDR 400
Western Digital SATA 120gb

Raid drivers are installed.

 

[Nodsu]

Test the HDD. And test your RAM. Copy the installation files to the hard drive to get over a flaky CD.

 

[jarvis]

Test the HDD. And test your RAM. Copy the installation files to the hard drive to get over a flaky CD.

I cannot test the HDD because the only other 2 machines I have access to do not have SATA motherboards. I will test the RAM in a few days..but I'm not sure what you mean by copying the installation files to the hard drive. I was under the impression that windows already copied installation files to the hard drive FROM the CD.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Nodsu]

But the installer fails when copying the files, no? Better copy them manually.

 

[jarvis]

I'm not quite sure of what you are trying to say.. Windows will format the HDD and then begin copying setup files. All is fine but then at certain points it will fail to copy files. I can skip or retry to copy a file; if I skip it the next file will fail to copy also. After skipping 10 or so files the installation just locks up. It has done this at 3 different percentages with totally different files. This leads me to believe that it is not a faulty CD. I think the HDD is just fishy..

I have no idea on how to copy the files manually. Windows doesn't give you that many options during setup and I've never done this before. I've built several computers and have been through the Windows installation countless times and I have never encountered this type of problem. Also, I must add; on the attempt before setup failed to copy files it made it all the way through, rebooted and then during the actual installation I got errors that the HardDisk driver could not be found, the CD ROM driver could not be found, and also the Battery driver could not be found.

I'm planning on just RMAing the HDD back to Western Digital...