Second SATA HD formatting...

Question

well i managed to update my bios successfully, again no hitches,
but the ram is still only showing up as 2 x 256 instead of 2 x 512,
even when run solo.
i cant install XP SP2 yet either because the machine is primarily for running ProTools, which isnt compatible with it yet.
might i be wise to send back the ram while i still can?
and i need advice on how to get my second SATA drive working!
i left it out til i got everything up and running with the boot drive and now want to get it going for use as my audio drive; ive hooked it up, it appears as working fine in device manager, but i cant seem to format it!
partitionmagic wont do it either. in fact, it wont do anything! i put a 40gb partition on my boot drive when installing winxp, intending to set the other 40gb of that drive up later to store games and random files on, and now i cant seem to set up even that second partition, thus my 80gb drive is only operational as 40gb! and my second 160GB drive cant be brought to life at all!
egadz the hassle!
please help!

Answer 1

Hi.
In the many times I am in Dublin, I've never been called a leg end.
The external drive, if its SATA, the drivers are already on C:> drive, so you should be able to see and format it, IDE just as any IDE.
The Rambiz, best run memtest86 and see if Ram is compatable with rig, and itself.
Then in Bios, change Memclock mode to limit, then memclock value to 333 or 400, some mem works at DDR333 only, try that and see if it finds the other stick. You might try Dimm3 for 2nd stick, sometimes Dimm2 is flakey with certain Ram.
Ram that gives Memtest errors at 400, often is OK at 333. You may have a flakey stick, if all errors in MT are above 512, you will know stick 2 is not compatable with stick 1, try them seperately, if 1 still gives errors RMA it.
It should run at 200 : ie 200x2 = 400   : 157 x 2 =333.
Never mind the million, a guiness will do.
Cheers
jocko