I recently inherited a new hard drive which came originally as a external unit. It's a maxtor 250GB DiamondMax 10 drive that my friend gave me. When I installed the drive into my case and booted up for the first time, windows just hung and never started.

The drive shows up in the BIOS. I tried disconnecting all drives except my primary optical and the 250GB hard disk and using my windows install disk to delete whatever partions existed on the drive, but it did not work. The installer also froze. I did this because the drive was previously part of a mac os X system.

The drive does not make any bad noises. Is there any other way of trying to blank the drive if I cannot start windows? Is it shot?

Thanks in advance

Is this a S ATA or P ATA drive? Reason I ask is that I have the same drive in SATA and when I bought it they told me SATA 2 was the same price and was backward compatible. Well not for my system Bios recognized the drive but the windows install disc would not. You can download Power Max from Maxtors web site and test the drive from a bootable floppy or CD. You can also down load Maxblast to do a format but it has been recommended to me to let Windows do the format. Maxblast will write zero's to the drive though.

I would just use maxblast to wipe the drive. In addition, it has diagnostic tools to test the drive (at least it used to) and can do a low level format if nesasary.

Maybe the connection type (USB/Firewire) and chipset in the enclosure has an impact here.

Thanks everyone
crossg: The drive is the PATA version
ripit + crossg: I can't use the maxblast software to blank the drive because I can't boot windows off my other hard disk while it's plugged in.

you did set the jumper to master and put it on the secondary ide all by itself?

after bios post press pause break and see if a little extra time gets it unstuck,
even tap it gently first, it may be drawing down the power rail too much.

after you boot(if?) right click on my computer/manage disk management

I got a maxtor 160 that had been banged around for several months in an external case, damn thing kapowed on me right next to my head one day after a few weeks in a tower.

Just info. I am not surprised it wont boot, I have had problems trying to install a HDD with an operating system from another machine. Like I mentioned above If BIOS sees it you can probably use Maxblast ( there is a Windows and a DOS version available) from a bootable floppy or CD hence no need to boot to Windows. Your Bios may also have a Enhanced or compatible mode and that may help to boot ( not positive though).

It sounds like it is trying to boot from the new drive. I forget the terminology, but the drive probably has a partition that was set as a primary partition (if that is the right term) so the computer may be trying to boot from it. does it startup and go through the startup screens and the stop at the point where windows would normally start? If so I would bet that is it. Try checking your bios settings for boot order and see if it will let you select priority for which hard drive to boot from or check first. Also, I have seen motherboards that will default to whatever drive you booted from last. Try disconecting the drive, boot windown, shut it down, reconect the drive and try it (it kind of sounds like you have already tried that though). If nothing else is working, I would temporarilly disconect your boot drive, install the new drive as master, run maxblast from a floppy (boot from the floppy and make sure booting from a floopy is enabled in in your bios). Then run the max blast software and format the drive. Do a full format, not a quick format. It should at some point ask you if it is going to be a boot drive or a secondary storage drive. Select secondary storage (or whatever the equivalent option is) so it is not set as primary. then shut it down, rejumper it as slave or put it on the second channel or however you want it. Then reconect your boot drive and see if it works. If that fails to work, I would say that there might be something wrong with the drive. Maybe it got jerked around during transport or something or perhaps it got exposed to a magnetic source and the low level formatting got damaged. Try hooking it up as the only drive again and run whatever diagnostic max blast provides (boot from the floppy again). Maxblast can even do a low level format (at least it used to be able to).

called setting the partition active

ripit, avoid the use of third party translation software(maxblast)
unless absolutely necessary(bios won't see that big a hard drive).

you already have windows and bios trying to talk, when you put an
interpreter inbetween them, things get mistranslated.

there is a file from ibm that writes zeros to the fat or ntfs table, zap,
after that a normal format(slow) is good enough.

Thats the term I was looking for. As far as max blast, I just figured it would be the easiest to find, not that it was nesasarilly the best.

We hosed some OS loads on controller cards with one of those softwares
when we didn't even need it, duh! Called learning the hard way, make all the mistakes and learn not to repeat them.

On a side note. I have a friend that is trying to set up his first raid array. He tried to configure it in windows, and with my fucked up windows install, I could not run control pannel much less computer managment to step through it with him. Any pointers to a guide to use computer managment to do raid (the big problem is the partition and getting it right aparently, I cannot remember every option he is looking at (doing it over the phone, what a pain).

You can mirror a hardware raid, but I wouldn't advise any kind of software
stripe array from within windows as that's not possible for the system?
You do a hardware stripe first in the raid bios before installing the OS.

He is running raid off the motherboard and I finally helped him get it working (I think the primary problem was getting a proper partition).

Lol
That's the achilles heel of raid arrays, you need to setup the raid array before windows can be installed.

You need to boot into windows (using a standard IDE HD) to easily create the partitions you want on the raid array, before installing windows to it.

You will also need to get the right drivers (txtsetup.oem (??)) from the driver disk to get windows setup to recognise the raid controller (and hence the raid array).

Definately don't both trying software raid with windows. Linux you could have some level of trust. Using windows to software striping is playing with fire, with bare-hands.

Good luck

Intel only no amd experience. If you put the operating system on the raid you load Intel Application Accelator off a floopy before say wxp. If you put the os on ide just load it and install Intel Application Accelator raid utility later. Go into computer managment initalize raid drives format, go back to IAA utility and make raid disc aray. Amd was similar I remember helping a friend over the phone about a year ago.

Um ... hardware raid is usually a seperate bios function.
You need to configure the raid array in this area, and then windows see's it as a single "Scsi" HD.

Once the controller has it's drivers installed in WinXP, no external applications are required to access the drive.

Similarly, once you have you raid controller driver disc, windows setup can access the raid array, exactly the same as a normal IDE disk.

He wants to clone his current operating system install and use it. I just told him to install the raid driver before he cloned it. So far as I know he got it working.

that's the proper term for clone, now it get's hairy setting
which active to boot and rebuilding mirrors, which drive is bad?

I dont mean that he wants to run a mirrored raid array. He wants to run a striped raid array for speed, but he wants to copy his current install to it rather than do a fresh install. The only real problem that we were having was that I could not remember the right options in disk managment to format and partition the drive (and could not pull it up on my computer due to a problem with my install). I had him read through the options though and we got it figured out.