Help! Firewire HD help please

I just got bought a 300GB Lacie D2 Firewire/USB hard drive and I can't format it. It started out as HFS+ which I can read with MacDrive, but then a file transfer failed straight away and my machine locked up. When I restarted, the drive would mount but no file system or size showed and it prompted me to format. I tried a quick format, and it said it failed. So I tried a normal format, that took an hour and then failed at the end. So I tried the USB cable instead of the FW. A quick format failed. So now I'm trying a long format again but I'd put money on it failing again.

I seem to remember having a similar problem with my Maxtor 160GB when I bought that, and I've no idea how I fixed it.

Weird... I just cancelled the long format in order to try something else, and then it had mounted and was showing up fine. I tried a quick format again but it failed.

Now I'm not sure... Maybe it's okay but I don't want to lose loads of work if it's not. Should I do a long format again and make sure it gets to the end?

You probably need to use Partition Magic or something similar to delete all partitions on the drive and re-partition it then do the long format.

Seems a bit odd to have to do this to a brand new drive - especially as the same thing happened with the last drive. Where can I get Partition Magic? And is there a freeware alternative if PM is commercial?

It seems to be kind of working for now - although only through USB: Firewire doesn't even mount it - and given my time pressure that's good enough for now. I just won't trust it with my most prescious data...

I've had to do it to a number of brand-new supposedly pre-formatted drives before. Beforehand they don't want to play, after re-partitioning and formatting all is sweet. This method will work fine via USB.

If you don't understand all this, then it's a good idea to read up on Windows partitioning before attempting any of this. I don't want to be the one responsible for causing you to lose data

XP has a built in partitioning tool.

Right-click 'My Computer' and select 'Manage'. In the left pane of the window select 'Disk Management'. From here you can add/delete partitions from ANY drive connected to your PC.

*** Be very careful. Make absolutely certain you do not delete any partitions on your other hard drives otherwise you will lose the data contained on them. ***

You will be able to spot your Lacie drive in the Disk Management list by the drive letter and the size which should be around 300GB.

To delete a partition, right-click it and use the pop-up menu. Same goes for creating a partition. The moment you delete a partition, all data contained on it is effectively gone. Like I keep stressing, be careful. I normally use NTFS so I don't know if you'll have issues with other filesystems. Also, make sure you create it as a Primary partition.

After you've deleted and re-created a partition on your Lacie, exit the Disk Management tool and use Windows to do the full format of your new partition.

Hope this helps

...since he's using Firewire and a program called 'macdrive', I assume he is using a Mac, not windows...

In that case, I can't help.