I wanted to add a larger second SATA drive to my PC so took out the Western Digital WD5000 AAKS-00UU0A0 drive out of the ESATA casing I had. I assumed I could just throw it into my pc as a replacement second SATA drive. I've hit a problem though as it won't format.

 

When I first put it in, it all recognized fine, I could access the drive and move files. So I used the drive copy function in Acronis True Image 2013 to copy all my windows files onto the 500GB drive. When it finished and I booted the drive, even though it recognized it on boot up, it wouldn't boot into it (something about the DMI pool I think it said). I booted back into my original drive and I could see the 500GB drive there on my computer. I tried to format it and it wouldn't complete, saying it can't format it.

 

I then tried booting with an XP installation disk and tried to install XP onto it, but once again, it got right to the end of formatting and said it couldn't format it.

 

Has anyone any idea if I should be able to use a drive from and ESATA casing on an internal SATA cable?

 

Cheers

 

Vijay

First off, yes you can use an external S ATA drive as an Internal one.

 

Is this an XP install your doing?

Have you tried to run Windows startup repair from the installation disc?

 

It probably won't let you format the drive as it has a hidden Sytem Reserved partition. Windows disk management will show the drive and any hidden/protected partitions and will let you remove them.

Hello bud,

 

Yes it's XP.

 

I haven't tried windows startup repair, do you think that should be my next step?

 

It doesn't show up in disk management.

Have a read through these articles mate, should help; https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Windows+XP+boot+sector&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=cr

How old is the PC? Possible that the BIOS requires an update to be able to recognise 500gb internal drive properly. Although it is strange that it was working properly. Could you try putting it back in its external caddy and formatting it through that or on another computer?

This sounds a bit familiar - does it say anything about drive signature or signature collision? I took a 500GB HDD out of my laptop, put a new one in, got the new one working and booting OK, then put the old HDD in a caddy and guess what. The new PC couldn't see it. I could see it in the same caddy on other PCs and put other HDDs in the same caddy and the new PC would see them. Just not the old HDD in the caddy on the laptop. Hmmm. Then I found this http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/after-installing-a-second-wd-1tb-my-book-drive/28fe3c13-713a-449c-ac4d-4f22d9f70f8e?page=1 and followed the DiskPart instructions and bingo the HDD came back online. There's a video here http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/the-disk-is-offline-because-it-has-a-signature/2e1f20c0-8fbb-4952-a789-a0f1578f1616