New 1tb hd will not initialize, Disk Management Crashes

[Dweezy]

I just bought a Thermaltake Blacx SATA-USB Docking Station and a Samsung 1TB Spinpoint hard drive to go along with it. After connecting everything, I noticed that the hard drive is recognized in bios but not in Windows. The usb device installed alright but the hard drive is no where to be found.

I read that you had to initialize the disk before being able to format it. So I went to 'disk management' but I get this error "An internal error occurred. Restart the Disk Management snap-in." Then I press ok and the disk management window comes. I am unable to do anything at this point because another error comes up "Microsoft Management Console has stopped working." I am then forced to close the program. However in the background I can see that the Samsung drive is there.

I tried getting into disk management with the Samsung drive powered off. I still got the errors but I was able to actually look around in disk management. I then turned on the drive and the Samsung drive shows up. I right click to initialize but I get the same error message right away...

Any clues? If it is relevant, my hardware specs are somewhere down below...

 

[JimLewandowski]

What if you try formatting it in DOS? Then see if Disk Management can then see it?

 

[green98ls]

have you tried hooking the drive up internally?

 

[karlsnooks]

Dweezy,
WIN key (that's the one with the funny looking wavy flag on it)
type CMD.EXE (do not hit enter)
Right-click on CMD.EXE in the area above where you typed
Click on "Run as administrator"
You are now at a command prompt
Type following:

1. Diskpart and hit enter
2. List Disk and hit enter
3. Select Disk n where n is the number shown for your problem drive and hit enter
4. Create Partition Primary and hit enter
5. Format fs=ntfs quick and hit enter
6. Assign and hit enter
7. Exit and hit enter
8. Exit and hit enter

Now :
Win key
type DISKMGMT.MSC and hit enter

Does your drive show up?

 

[Dweezy]

Dweezy,
WIN key (that's the one with the funny looking wavy flag on it)
type CMD.EXE (do not hit enter)
Right-click on CMD.EXE in the area above where you typed
Click on "Run as administrator"
You are now at a command prompt
Type following:

1. Diskpart and hit enter
2. List Disk and hit enter
3. Select Disk n where n is the number shown for your problem drive and hit enter
4. Create Partition Primary and hit enter
5. Format fs=ntfs quick and hit enter
6. Assign and hit enter
7. Exit and hit enter
8. Exit and hit enter

Now :
Win key
type DISKMGMT.MSC and hit enter

Does your drive show up?

Thank you! My drive does show up, but I had to connect the hd internally for it to work. As such, I took out another hard drive and now the new drive was assigned the letter of the hard drive that I pulled out, which brings about some complications...

So I had a drive with the path "D". I pulled that out to put the Samsung hd in, now the Samsung is named "D". I actually wanted to replace the "D" hd with the Samsung one. So now that the Samsung is named "D," can I just simply copy over the entire contents of the old hard drive onto this one? Would anything be affected? The "D" drive was not my OS drive, it is a storage drive and it also has all my games installed to that drive.

 

[karlsnooks]

Dweezy,
Do I understand correctly that, before, you had a C: drive AND a D: drive. Furthermore, you had installed some programs to D:?

And now you want to clone your D drive from the old to the new?

 

[Dweezy]

Dweezy,
Do I understand correctly that, before, you had a C: drive AND a D: drive. Furthermore, you had installed some programs to D:?

And now you want to clone your D drive from the old to the new?

That's right. I had a C and a D prior. Now the new drive was installed as D since I pulled out the old D. If I just copy over the contents of the old D to the new one, would everything be a-ok?

 

[karlsnooks]

Dweezy,
If you still are using the same "c:" drive, then the next question is:
Which drives are actually connected at this very minute?
I need to know so that I can correctly advise you. I don't want to see you lose anything from your C: and old D: drive.

There are many quick answers but I will not give out a flippant comment as how to accomplish your objective.

 

[Dweezy]

At this very minute, the C, D( the new samsung drive), and H (Old D drive). I also have a CD/DVD labeled as E.

Actually, I would also like to know how to switch the drive letters so that my Old D drive can retain its D: path, while making the new Samsung drive whatever letter. I guess I would prefer it this way. If it can be done in the command prompt, that would be preferred because I my Disk Management tool crashes...

 

[karlsnooks]

Dweezy,
Here's the approach:
Use the good ol' command prompt and an xcopy command that I give you to copy everything from H: to D: Simply dragging and dropping using Windows Exploer will miss a couple of files.

That's going to give you a backup copy of your old d: on the new D:

After we've finished reassigning drive letters, and all is ok, then you can delete the stuff you copied to the Samsung if you so desire.

We're going to gain a little confidence regarding reassigning. We'll practice by getting your CDROM drive letter out of the way by reassigning your CDROM to M: (or whatever letter you would like).

For this one we will use DiskMgmt.MSC

We will reassign your harddrives using DiskPart.

So first let's do the harmless step of assigning the CDROM to M;

1. WIN key | type DISKMGMT.MSC | Enter key
2. In the graphic display showing your drives,
   On the LEFT-HAND side of the CDROM graphic display
   Right-Click and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths"
3. Click on the "Change" button
4. Click on the Down "arrow" next to your present CDROM drive letter
5. Click OK and OK your way out.

Now before I type out the XCOPY command and procedure you need, I'd like you to go to a command prompt, run some DiskPart commands and take a snapshot using the Snipping Tool and attach to your post.

I've attached a snapshot I made which shows the DiskPart Commands needed and the response from my Toshiba laptop.

 

[Dweezy]

Hello! I actually did some homework myself to find out how to reassign letters using command prompt. I forgot to update my results here. I actually cannot use disk management via Windows GUI, because it will crash on me constantly (reference to my first post on this board). So here's what I have done already...

Reassign all my drives (besides C). Coincidentally I reassigned my cd/dvd drives like you suggested first! I made them y and z to get them out of the way, in case I get more hard drives in the future. So now I've got C, D (the old hd) and E (the new hd). I did this the following way, in case someone sees this board and needs help. I had trouble at first and found that I had to use "volume" instead of "disk" to get anything reassigned.

1. Type "diskpart"
2. Windows Logo key+R
3. Type in CMD, enter
4. Type "list volume"
5. Type in "select volume n" where n is the volume want selected.
6. Type "assign letter=z" where z is the letter you want the selected volume to be assigned to.
7. Repeat for other drives if desired

and here's a pic:


karlsnooks: I resolved to keep the programs on my old D drive. I am not moving any installation files over to the new HD, just things for video editing and other junk so I believe I'm good to go! I don't need the xcopy command at the moment but could I see how I would do it? It seems really useful and good to know.

As always, I'm thankful for your help!

 

[karlsnooks]

Dweezy,
go to cmd prompt and type xcopy /?
xcopy r:\ s:\ /E /I /h /k /O

 

[Dweezy]

Thanks!