Johnny Fortune

There seem to be a number of people experiencing serious problems when formatting 2TB drives, myself included, which result in these drives being RMA'd. (Seagate and Western Digital). Please refer to http://www.thenextbench.com/hpg/board/mess...ding&page=1 for the most comprehensive post on this subject. Many reach a 54% formatting ceiling when using Vista 32 Storage Manager to format their drives (full or quick options). A number of theories as to why this happens are being discussed, notably: 1) There is a problem with Vista OS. - 2) There are Motherboards/BIOS issues which prevent these drives from being formatted successfully. Some have successfully formatted these drive by using another computer or by using alternative software. I am using a Asus Strike Extreme (Nividia 680i chipset) BIOS 1305, 4Gb RAM and an Areca 1220 Hardware Raid card supporting 7 x WD 500 drives. I've checked with Nividia system update tool to ensure my chipset drivers do not require updating. This is not a cheap motherboard/setup, yet I hit this 54% ceiling and the drive is now useless and has been RMA'd. I am concerned that this issue will reoccur when the replacement arrives unless I can find a solution and understand why this error exists. I do not have access to another computer and yes I could try some of the alternative solutions suggested in the above link. However, I wish to understand why this is happening i.e. is there a problem with my motherboard. I've been impressed by MSFN forums ability to resolve these types of problems and have posted this thread in the hope that you guys can shed some light on this issue. These drives are not in a software RAID config as we are aware of the 2TB limits. These are in all cases being formatted as JBOD. Any feedback would be appreciated. Cheers