Format ide- sata

[pshlady]

Hello,
I am working with a system that has gone thru some issues LOL. 2 ide 2 sata. all but 1 sata is with data on-ntfs. new drive 500 sata my computer doesnt see. I wanted to save the old sata data-xp-reformat 2 ide with xp,new drive with vista...I cant seem to get the IDE to format as ;in use'-dont want to mess with new drive until i get these fixed...where do i start when it wont let me fdisk or format the drives. i do have a raid card also wsas goining to put 2 ide on. suggestions? thank you for any input!

 

[suteck]

I'm a little confused on the question.

I wanted to save the old sata data-xp

If you want to save the data on the sata drive you will need to boot up onto one of the ide drives. Do you have xp installed on one of these drives? If so then boot to that drive, save the data from the 1 working sata drive onto either your current drive or onto the other ide drive. If not then you will need a portable HDD that you can store your information on. (unless you install on the new sata first but I see that you want to "fix" the other ones first).

where do i start when it wont let me fdisk or format the drives

Once this is done you should be able to double click my computer, right click the sata drive, and click format. You will get a warning about losing any unsaved information on that drive but click ok and it should format it. If it tells you then that it won't allow it you can go to start button, right click on my computer and go to manage. In manager click on storage, then click on disk manager local storage - give it a minute or two so it can access everything. When the list pops up find your hard drive and right click on it and click delete volume. When that finishes you can right click it again and click format. Is that what you're trying to do?

reformat 2 ide with xp,

After you have erased and reformatted the 1st sata drive are you now going to install xp or vista? If that's what you want to do then I would recommend you unplug the other hard drives and then install your operating system on the 1st/old sata drive. After you have installed your OS you can now turn off your system, plug your hard drives back in and save any information from them that you want on your sata 1st/old sata hard drive, (HDD for short). At this point you can follow the steps above to format your ide HDDs

new drive 500 sata my computer doesnt see.

If it's a "new" drive - as in bought from a store or just new to your system then you will need to initialize it first. Go to start button, right click on my computer and go to manage. In manager click on storage, then click on disk manager local storage - give it a minute or two so it can access everything. When the list pops up find your hard drive and right click on it and click initialize it. Then format it and you should be good to go. Close that out and click on my computer and you should see it there.

If you now want to install vista on this new sata HDD I would again recommend you unplug your other HDDs, then install. I have run into things like it calling the main drive that you have just installed vista on as "D". So everything is D://program files and so on instead of C://. That's why I recommend the unplugging of the HDDs during installition.
Does this answer your questions or did I just confuse you? I hope it does.