Sending a Hard Drive back

[360bhp]

Recently ordered a Western Digital hard drive (wd2500aaks) along with a whole new build. I lost 2 working days trying to set this thing up! See here

I found out the hard drive must be first run as a slave, and a western digital formatting tool must be used on it before the OS can see the drive! I had no access to a spare PC with sata connection, so in the end had to travel 30 minutes to the nearest Novatech to pick up another drive. Find it a bit silly that the drive has to first be run as a slave and formatted.

There are a few light scratches on the side of the HDD from where I have slotted it into the drive bay. Is this covered for a return? And also, are returns sent by cheque or put back into the account the payment was taken from?

Thanks

[ackrite26]

a western digital formatting tool must be used on it before the OS can see the drive!

Not sure this is true. Yes the drive has to be formatted and partitioned before anything can be installed however the microsoft installation procedure will format it to NTFS format for you, WD Life Guard Tools are not needed.

I found out the hard drive must be first run as a slave

SATA Jumpers are there so the drive can downgrade from 3.0Gbps to 1.5Gbps as some motherboards can not handle the faster 300Gbps.

[360bhp]

I spent a total of around 5 hours looking for a solution on the internet. All posts I could find on forums, said to use the drive as a slave and run WD Data Lifeguard Tools, and use it to format the drive. During the Vista 64 installation, the drive doesn't even show up.

The motherboard I have supports 300Gbps. The other drive I purchased from Novatech worked first time. Showed up in bios, showed up in Vista installation page, formatted and installed onto it fine.

[philpem]

During the Vista 64 installation, the drive doesn't even show up.

Does your motherboard not need a SATA or RAID driver floppy to be inserted when setup starts?

My last two both needed a disk to be inserted, then you hit F8 on boot and select "CD-ROM" from the boot menu, and hit F6 when Win2000/XP setup starts (at the "Press F6 to load additional drivers..." prompt).

A few minutes later, you press "S" to select a driver, then pick it from the list. Repeat until all the drivers you need are loaded, then IIRC you press Enter to continue.

It's unlikely the Vista installer will be able to see anything unless it has the correct SATA drivers for your motherboard...

[discopanda]

Well normally you'd be covered by the standard distance selling regulations. BUT as the drive isn't faulty (it really isn't!) and its been damaged cosmetically I don't think scan have any obligation to give you any money back at all. If they do, you'll be charged a percentage of the cost at the very least.

[ackrite26]

I spent a total of around 5 hours looking for a solution on the internet. All posts I could find on forums, said to use the drive as a slave and run WD Data Lifeguard Tools, and use it to format the drive. During the Vista 64 installation, the drive doesn't even show up.

The motherboard I have supports 300Gbps. The other drive I purchased from Novatech worked first time. Showed up in bios, showed up in Vista installation page, formatted and installed onto it fine.

Just pointing out this info before someone else.

Cant belive no one managed to help in your previous thread.

I think philpem is correct and the correct SATA drivers (F6) needed to be installed before Vista is installed.

[360bhp]

Does your motherboard not need a SATA or RAID driver floppy to be inserted when setup starts?

My last two both needed a disk to be inserted, then you hit F8 on boot and select "CD-ROM" from the boot menu, and hit F6 when Win2000/XP setup starts (at the "Press F6 to load additional drivers..." prompt).

Thats 2000/XP, I'm pretty sure Vista doesn't have this feature. When press F6 it allows you to choose boot options of the disc, and a memory test if I can recall correctly. When booting the Gigabyte CD it would autorun "quick flash" recovery utility or something along them lines. Saying that, I did try and load the drivers (via the installation menu) and it would just say the drivers are incompatible. Also tried loading from a USB stick just incase the cd was damaged.

It's unlikely the Vista installer will be able to see anything unless it has the correct SATA drivers for your motherboard...

After reading various posts on other forums about Gigabyte motherboards, I've found out they don't need drivers to run a single SATA drive, only when running in RAID it needs drivers.

The drive probably isn't faulty, but I paid for a drive to install Vista on, and that's what I had hoped to get Don't mean that in a rude way, but I should'nt need to take time out to use WD tools on it.

Anyway, I'll let Scan decide if its possible to return it or not. If not, it will have to go to ebay I guess.

[ackrite26]

Thats 2000/XP, I'm pretty sure Vista doesn't have this feature. When press F6 it allows you to choose boot options of the disc, and a memory test if I can recall correctly. When booting the Gigabyte CD it would autorun "quick flash" recovery utility or something along them lines. Saying that, I did try and load the drivers (via the installation menu) and it would just say the drivers are incompatible. Also tried loading from a USB stick just incase the cd was damaged.

Have a look at this

The drive probably isn't faulty, but I paid for a drive to install Vista on, and that's what I had hoped to get Don't mean that in a rude way, but I should'nt need to take time out to use WD tools on it.

Are you confident you covered all evenues to get this HD working or just got inpatient and bought a new drive?? There are many factors that can cause a problem in a PC. When you buy computer components the retailer expects you to have adequate knowledge to instal and maintain/trouble shoot those components if you encounter a problem, rather than go and buy new ones due to not overcoming the issue.
Did you talked to SCAN technical support? They are always at the top of their game when it comes to customer satisfaction and after sales follow up.

[360bhp]

Have a look at this

"I did try and load the drivers (via the installation menu) and it would just say the drivers are incompatible. Also tried loading from a USB stick just incase the cd was damaged."

As above, tried it but still didn't work. I'm about 90% sure once I format this drive as a slave it will work. I've read on about 5 or 6 forums that the only solution was to make it a slave and format it. Something to do with WD drives needing a file system or boot sector for the OS to detect it or something... lol

Are you confident you covered all evenues to get this HD working or just got inpatient and bought a new drive?? There are many factors that can cause a problem in a PC. When you buy computer components the retailer expects you to have adequate knowledge to instal and maintain/trouble shoot those components

I wouldn't call waiting 2 days to install an OS impatient. If you look at my initial post asking for help, you will be able to tell by the post dates of how long I tried for. Also posted for help on 2 other forums, a Vista forum, and Toms Hardware forum. I tried everything from new SATA cables, tried every SATA slot on the mobo, tried changing every HDD related option in the BIOS, swapped memory sticks, even tried to install XP 32-bit and would have settled for that. I also purchased a SATA DVD drive from here, as someone suggested it may be that Vista doesn't like being installed from an IDE DVD drive onto a SATA HDD. As a last and final attempt, I tried to install AMD64-bit drivers from the Gigabyte CD, but guess what?... Nothing!

Throughout all this, I was putting bits back into my old PC to see if I had any helpful posts on the threads I posted. I have adequate knowledge about pc systems, but just don't have a spare PC with SATA HDD

[ackrite26]

"I did try and load the drivers (via the installation menu) and it would just say the drivers are incompatible. Also tried loading from a USB stick just incase the cd was damaged."

As above, tried it but still didn't work. I'm about 90% sure once I format this drive as a slave it will work. I've read on about 5 or 6 forums that the only solution was to make it a slave and format it. Something to do with WD drives needing a file system or boot sector for the OS to detect it or something... lol

SATA drives can not be jumpered to 'master' or 'slave' settings. The master/slave thing is all to do with IDE drives using the same cable.

[360bhp]

Slave/Master...... Basically, it needs to be put into a PC with an OS on SATA drive, made a secondary drive, and formatted.

[moogle]

SATA drives can not be jumpered to 'master' or 'slave' settings. The master/slave thing is all to do with IDE drives using the same cable.

Yeah.. iirc what the jumper usually does is switch to sata 150 mode so that older chipsets can detect the drive.

[arthurleung]

From a very brief view of the post it looked like the SATA controller is set to AHCI mode, so it needs the driver to be detected by XP installer.

Perhaps just switch back to SATA mode will sort it out.

[ackrite26]

From a very brief view of the post it looked like the SATA controller is set to AHCI mode, so it needs the driver to be detected by XP installer.

Perhaps just switch back to SATA mode will sort it out.

AHCI needs to be installed after Vista unless using a USB to load the drivers at this screen and so should be disabled before installing Vista.

The SATA controller should be set to IDE mode

[360bhp]

AHCI was disabled, and the the drive was run in IDE mode. Sata port native mode was enabled. HPET Mode was enabled and in 64 bit. The onboard IDE controller was enabled. Didn't work.

[360bhp]

Cany somebody from Scan reply please?

Thanks