Anyone else have REALLY bad luck with a new SATA HDD?

[EvilHorace]

The first one just clicked when I got it (new btw) so I RMA'd it.
This is it, suppose to be a good, fast HDD:
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model WD740GD. Reviews there look GREAT! Didn't come with ANY instructions besides what's wriiten on the HDD itself. I'm using its SATA power connection, not the old "legacy" type.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 160&depa=1

....so 2 weeks or so later it arrives here yesterday. I unplugged my old SCSI HDDs, card too so that I could do a fresh XP SP2 install on this new HDD. Seems to install OK but at the end when I need to create a user or so, after it creates them and the screen appears to click on one, I move the mouse and the screen goes black

I re-boot......several attempts as it keeps happening. It takes longer than normal to boot windows too. I once got it to boot the desktop but that didn't last long either before (again), black screen.

When it got to the desktop, I was going to begin by installing the Via 4 in 1 drivers from my cd BUT autostart wasn't working and no program was seemingly able to run the cd. If I opened "My Comp" and went to the cd-rom drive, I could see the name of the cd in that drive but there was no program to open it. I then clicked "run/browse" and it couldn't see the cd-rom drive at all.

After the desktop then went black, it's been unable to boot windows whatsoever. I'll see the beginning of the XP start-up screen and then it just re-boots.

Note: Besides the SATA driver floppy that came with my new mobo (which I installed during the XP install), NO other drivers or SW has been installed on this new HDD, can't (as is).

SO....I try to re-install XP. It starts the "inspects hardware" and the the selection of "Install XP" enter, Repair Install" R BUT no matter what......it says that it can't find a HDD!

The HDDs on, spinning, sounds OK and yes, its drivers were installed (F6, S) previously.

I simply can't believe this! There's only one SATA HDD (not two) but should that matter? I only need it for extra storage as the 36gb of my 2 SCSI HDDS isn't enough anymore.

I'm thinking of just going to my local BB and buying yet another HDD from there as I'd really like to get my PC done and don't want to wait yet another 2 weeks for NewEgg to ship me #3 HDD.

Is there something I could be doing wrong here with this SATA HDD? Do they have to be mirrored in pairs to work? Not according to the review above at NewEgg. There are no jumper settings (says that's not required with SATA) so that's not it.
The ONLY card attached to the mobo is my ATI 9800 Pro with no drivers presently loaded with this new XP install.

Any "Plan B" ideas here with this new HDD #2 that Windows now says doesn't exist?

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Note to FP or anyone else who might be following my previous stories: I havent yet done a fresh XP re-install on my older SCSI HDD as IMO, I have too many programs, etc that I don't want to loose. I was hoping to get this new larger HDD to work first, then copy what I need from the older SCSI drives onto the new one but .........

[TruckStuff]

1) Are you sure this is an HDD issue and not a motherboard issue? If you are using an add-on SCSI controller and are using the onboard SATA/IDE controllers for the first time, you may not have ever noticed the problem before.

2) IMHO, WD drivers aren't worth a damn. Every WD drive I've ever owned has failed on me. I've owned every other brand (Maxtor, IBM, Seagate, etc, etc) and WD is the only drive I've ever had problems with. (NOTE: This does not in any way mean that others have the same experience. YMMV. )

But I'd look at #1 first.

[EvilHorace]

Are you sure this is an HDD issue and not a motherboard issue?

At this point, who knows? All I could try next is to clear the mobos CMOS (term?) and try again.

The same mobo was previously running my SCSI HDDs with an adaptek SCSI PCI card but seemingly using Win XP SCSI drivers.

This whole upgrade's been one major bummer from day 1.

[DoPeY5007]

I have the 36gb Raptor and it set up and worked fine.


It sounds to me you have other hardware issues...., what, well, that I am not sure

[Invisible Evil]

36bg raptor here too, set up fine.

[FlyingPenguin]

I've had bad luck with Maxtor and WD lately. I lean toward Seagate drives now with 5 year warranties.

No experience with SATA here yet. My mobo supports it but I'm running EIDE drives.

[EvilHorace]

I really don't know what else to do. I'd have to think that if I pick up a "descent" EIDE HDD at BestBuy tonight that it'll load XP and run A-OK.
I have an old Maxtor 13.6 GB EIDE HDD (newly formatted, no files) in the kids PC as its D drive. Maybe I'll try that first.

Any other ideas with my present SATA HDD situation?

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin
I lean toward Seagate drives now with 5 year warranties.

the WD Rator were the first with the 5 year

[Executioner]

If the screen goes black, I wonder if you have a problem with your mobo supporting ACPI in your power management BIOS screen? You could disable ACPI in the power management in your BIOS and give it another shot.

The reason I say that is I tried to install XP on an old bx chipset, and it would reboot when it got to the install screen after loading the drivers from the CD. I was able to fix it by disabling ACPI, which means you wind up with a Standard HAL install instead of Advance Power Management.

[EvilHorace]

I'll try that before swapping in the old EIDE HDD.

[ZYFER]

also while in the bios, check the SATA settings, just to do some verifying everything is set correctly

[EvilHorace]

Cleared Mobos CMOS (jumper)...........I'll be back

Whew! Looks like I'm making progress. No HDD would work whatsoever UNTIL I cleared the CMOS, then I could boot with my old SCSI HDDs. I unplugged that, cleared the CMOS again, installed the new SATA HDD and now it's installing XP afterall.

Update: Installed w/o a hitch and seemingly A-OK now, now it's just all the little things like drivers, etc.

Is clearing the CMOS between HDD types a normal thing that I'm unaware of or is this just one fussy mobo?

Anyone know if both a SATA HDD and my SCSI HDDs can co-exist on the same mobo? I'm having my doubts. If not, I'll have to re-assemble the SCSI HDDs in yet another case to transfer files.

[wvjohn]

ghostys............

[Viperoni]

36gb Raptor working fine here

[EvilHorace]

ghostys............

Can you explain?