formatting windows 2003

[damianJ]

I have a computer with windows small business server installed on it. I want to format it and do a fresh install again. The problem is that every time i boot from the cd and try to format it says
"Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged. Make sure the drive is switched on and properly connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated. Consult you computer manual or SCSI adapter documentation for more information."
I know for a fact that the drive isn't damaged. Any insight would be extremely helpful. Thanks in advance.

[mjc]

Some more information about the machine in question...make/model, types of drives, etc.

It may be a good idea to run the drive manufacturer's diagnostics on the drive anyway...just to be sure about its health.

[damianJ]

Its a hypersonic pc. P4 3.06ghz with 1 gig of ram. Has 2 hard drives one is 80 the other 120gigs with no special configuration. My main hd recently died ( the 80gig one) and replaced it with a western digital one, same size. Before I installed small business server on the hd I had windows xp on it and formatted it to put sbs on it.

[mjc]

OK, are these P-ATA or SATA drives?

[damianJ]

they are pata

[mjc]

OK...so no need for extra drivers, no RAID setup...nothing. Is the WD jumpered correctly? (It should be set to be Master with Slave...that bridges the pins marked Master).

[damianJ]

yep everything is setup correctly jumpers settings etc...

[damianJ]

hmm this is very weird... I took my windows vista disc and formatted my hard drive through that setup process and it worked. After I formatted through that I then proceeded to install sbs again and everything went through flawlessly. Really strange but whatever works right? haha. Thanks for all your help.

[mjc]

You got it formatted...that's what counts.