had an drive die ages ago, but I don't store much so made do with my other 1tb drive

got a 3tb drive from scan last week

installed fine, had to update Intel drivers for drivers over 2.2tb

went to partition the drive in windows disk management

made the partition no problem (using full drive size)

but when it dried to format it, it failed.. and I got the disconnect then the reconnect sound you get when you plug a usb device in/out

weird...

every time I try to format it, it does that again (formatting seams to take too long too)

the drive disappears from disk management for about 10sec each time it does this

I've been trying difference things trying to track the problem down, I can make a 200meg partition, and it'll format no problem (even multiple 200meg partitions are fine)

but anything bigger causes it to crash...

I can make a 200meg partition, format it, then extend it so it takes up the full drive... and that looks ok - apparently doesn't need formatting?... but crashes if I do try to format it - I'd rather format it to test and figure this out now than when it's full of date

testing more, just made 300meg, 400meg, 500meg and a 600meg partition and formatted no problem... tired 700meg and 900meg and it disconnected when formatting

making multiple or just a single partiton makes no difference, 600meg is fine, 700meg crashes

I'm lost... google isn't giving me anything and all I can think is it's a bad drive... but it's a freaky problem, I've never heard of / seen something like this before ?

any ideas before I just send the drive back and hope it's a hardware error ? (I hate sending stuff back)


p.s. it makes the partiton fine, it's just when I format it there's a problem :-s

tried more, sometimes 700meg partitions work sometimes they don't


was sure it was a software/driver/windows problem but guess it must be a bad drive... unless anyone has any ideas ?


p.s. I know trying different sized partitions is a dumb idea... I was trying it to see if the faster formatting made any difference... like disk usage is causing the problem... but it just kept getting freakier :-s