I just purchased an external western digital media center 200 gigabyte drive. It is a combo card reader and HD. Thought it would make a great addition to my hardware collection. The problem is, and I know this can be fatal- I can't format it. Every time I try and format windows comes back and says that the was an error in formatting it. I went ahead and deleted the partition when I first hooked it up in Disk management and went ahead and have been trying to format it so I can use it but so far no luck.

Windows is giving me conflicting info on this drive. It says that it is 250 GB'S(wrong)in disk management but if I right click on the drive, choose format then (correctly) tells me it is 186 GB's

Could the darn thing be bad right of the box? Usually if you can't format a drive it means it is no good.

Not a newbie when it comes to computers but I just want to make sure I have gone thru all the options before I package up and sent it back.

This is a win xp pro box, just a couple of months old. Since this is my second large external drive hooked up to this system I don't understand why windows would have such a problem with it.

Thanks for your help,

Bill

Don't have any experience with that specific External Enclosure, I usually buy generic ones that are cheaper. From my experience the USB/Firewire chipsets in External Enclosures can be flaky so whenever you have problems with the HD's, simple take 'em out and hook 'em up to your computer directly. Then run the HD diagnostic programs from the HD manufacturer.

I have since returned that drive but our desktop engineer told me to update the BIOS (which created more problems) and the chipset drivers for the motherboard. Since I have returned the drive I don't know if this would have worked. I still need a drive with a lot of storage capacity but don't really need the hassle I had the last time.