hey all, one sata hard drive has been working perfectly for a year or two. one day when i tried to open it, it hangs xp for a long time and then gave me a message "the drive F: is not formatted, would you like to do it now?" i tried to click "yes" for formating, but it then tells me, "can't format the drive". the drive is not accessible at all. i can't do a search on the drive, nor browse files within. but when i open "disk manager", the status of the drive is health. i even tried to change the drive letter from there, it changed the letter, still can't open the drive. i am guessing it might be a corrupted registry problem. or maybe i am wrong. any suggestions? any help? thanks a lot.

Does it show up in the BIOS correctly if at all? As a side note, you might want to try a different SATA cable. Cables can go out instantly and for no apparent reason. I've seen that happen several times. WinSimple Software