Hello Guys,

I would like to start this thread by giving everyone a problem to resolve.

I got a Seagate SATA 200GB partitioned in 4 parts. For about two months it worked flawlessly. I tested each partion and the results are very good. No bad sectors that is. I tested it with Everest and the results are good with respect to reading and writing. The problem began when we transfered files from a Seagate 40GB medallist HD of a friend. It was about 2GB in size. The reason for that is that 40GB has too much an fragmentation that the disk defragmeter could no longer handle it. While copying the files we encountered several "cyclic redundancy" errors. Then that where all the problem started. My SATA will not allow me to delete some of the copied files which is stored in the 3rd partition so I choose to reformat the whole partition. While reformatting the 3rd partition it hangs up. So, I deleted all the partitions of my SATA drive and repartitioned it. I used the Seagate Disc Wizard to repartition and reformat the drive but when I loaded the OS installer the first partion in marked "Unknown" and it cannot be formatted. I deleted all the partition using the XP installer disc repartitioned it. This time only two partitions but still the first partition cannot be formatted.

Question:

1. Is SATA drives prone to this problem?
2. Is this a problem with the master boot record (MBR)?
3. Does partitioning a drive more than 3 partitions contribute to this problem?
4. Are SATA drives really reliable to this date or they need more time to mature?

I hope you guys have some experience or thoughts over this matter. Please feel free to add your experiences with SATA drive to this thread. As of what happen to that drive, hehehehe... I sent it back to PCX for warranty and they told me to wait 3 weeks for the replacement.