Initialise not ready disk

[jollyjohn]

What make is the psu?Saying it's 700w doesn't mean much if it's a crappy brand.

I thought Corsair was one of the top brands on PSUs. It cost a pretty penny. I has a 7 year warranty. It is 750 W. Just checked again.

http://www.corsair.com/en-au/power-supply-units

[newpball]

A 750 W Corsair is just fine.

[Nelson37]

Position of the connector on the cable ONLY dictates Master or Slave setting If repeat IF you have a Cable Select cable, it will have small notches cut in the ribbon. With a standard cable, position is MEANINGLESS. If drive jumper is not set to Cable Select, position on cable is MEANINGLESS.

Set drive jumper to Master. Double check jumper positions, some drives have a separate "Master-Standalone" and "Master-Slave present" setting. Setting used with USB interface MAY, or MAY NOT, be standard and functional. Use as ONLY drive on the cable. Interference with other drives on cable causing malfunction is somewhat uncommon, but easy to avoid.

EDIT - the error you are getting is EXACTLY what happens if the Master/Slave setting is incorrect.

Hook it up the correct way, eliminate all other drives other than optical, boot from optical disk, partition and format as described earlier. If that doesn't work, something is wrong with the way IDE is set up in the BIOS, the interface is hosed, or the drive is hosed. Try disabling SATA in BIOS and double-check IDE settings, there are often multiple setting types - Legacy or Compatible or some such. Try both.

Whatever the power supply is, malfunction and/or lack of power is a possibility. That is one reason you dis-connect the other drives. Interference from installed software and/or the OS is another, and also why I suggest you boot from an optical drive. Formatting from the optical, with only ONE hard drive present, also eliminates variables.

I suggest these things because they have been shown to consistently work on the multiple occasions I have encountered a similar problem. I am not guessing or parroting something I read somewhere, I am telling you what I have witnessed to solve the problem, multiple times.

As always, you are free to deal with the problem as you wish.

[jollyjohn]

Hi Nelson.

Thank you for you post. When you say to boot form an optical drive, do you mean I can boot from a windows install disk?

Is it possible to format the HDD from that installation disk? Or, do I have to use another boot disk? I've never used Linux and I would not know how to use it either.

Please forgive my ignorance.

Thanks

John

[bevills1]

It's possible to format a HDD with a Win8.1 install disk, and Win7 should be similar. In Win8.1 I boot to install disk, elect install, select custom, and there're options to remove drive/partition, create new, format, etc. However, the install disk won't see the drive either if the drive is indeed bad. Recently I ordered 2 new Western Digital Green 1TB drives that were both doa. Win8.1 Disk Manager, Win8.1 install disk and Seagate Discwizard boot disk all failed to recognize both drives.

[Nelson37]

I have never seen an OS install disk that would NOT format a drive, it's kinda an important step in the OS install. Any win CD or DVD should do. If you can delete the partition, you should be good to go. You can stop right there, restore other drives, boot normally and create partition and format.

The install CD can not possibly contain any information about any existing drives, and you only have one drive available to format. The interface is as simple as possible, and what the drive is designed for. All unnecessary variables are removed. Power usage is minimized. Communication with the drive is straightforward, no oddball USB interface is interfering.

Master/Slave settings are usually clearly printed on the drive. Double check and make sure they are correct. If failure, assume mirror-image of the diagram and try the reverse. It's been a while, but IIRC WD was only using the jumper closest to the power, Maxtor was all off, there's quite a bit of variation but a quick Google search will verify. Do NOT assume jumper setting for USB interface is correct for internal connection.

[lingyi]

@jollyjohn

Even if your Windows CD works (which it likely will) I highly reccomend getting UBCD (Ulitmate Boot CD) and Knoppix for your emergency PC repair toolbox. Both can be installed and run from a 1TB flashdrive (separately, not together). UBCD runs from DOS, though there are menus and graphical interfaces for many of the programs and Knoppix runs from a desktop environment that while is fairly intuitive (in Linux you "mount" a drive) .

The advantage to these is that they run completely outside the Windows environment (even Windows CDs sometimes balk at odd HD issues) and give the highest chance of recovering data from non-physically damaged hard drives.

[jollyjohn]

Thanks guys.

I will not use USB interface. I'm just finishing with a laptop and and start with the HD next week.

Nelson. I always value your knowledge, thank you for your input. And thanks to all of you guys that gave me your help.

I'll keep you posted.

Regards

John

[jollyjohn]

Success.

I did exactly as Nelson suggested and it happened. I never thought it would be that easy.

Here is a pic of the disk manager:

Thanks ones more, I'm still learning.

John