Very strange issue here. I'm using a SATA-to-USB converter to quickly image a bunch of drives using Ghost 14.
I can see my SATA drive in Disk Management. It has a drive letter and everything. It's NTFS, nothing fancy. It's listed in PartInfo (will attach). But Ghost just has no idea where it is. I've been Googling for an answer for most of the day and I'm just baffled. I reformatted using DISKPART to make sure it used a typical MBR-type format. The partition appears to be active. Works fine in Windows 7 x64.
Not sure about the unusually long MBR/Boot Sector. I actually followed some instructions about trying to make it work in DiskPart. I don't mind formatting the drive if you can suggest a way to resolve it.
Try using windows to delete that partition and make a new one. (you will loose any data on the drive, if anything important is on there copy it to another location first).
With the drive attached, go into disk management.
Make sure you are looking at the right drive, right click on the G: partition and select "delete partition".
When it is deleted it will show as "unallocated space" right click on that and select "create partition"
Make a basic partition (not dynamic) make it a primary partition and choose the option to quick format it as NTFS.
Then disconnect the drive using "safely remove hardware", reconnect it and make another partinfo.text file to attach here.
Just be carefull and make sure you don't delete the wrong partition.
So I did as you stated, though in my Disk Management MMC, it uses the term "Volume" rather than "Partition." So I deleted the Volume, created a new one (it didn't give me an option to make Dynamic, it just defaulted to Simple, it seemed, as this was listed under the "Will format with these features" Window.
That one has the same problem. Another thing very odd is the starting sector of the partition, I thought deleting and creating a new one would fix that as well.
If there is nothing wrong with the drive I would say it's your "SATA to USB" converter.
Do you happen to have a desktop computer you can use that you could temporarily connect the drive to a motherboard to make the partition.
Just my 2 cents... I would not really trust copying through one of those converters. I once copied Some v2i image files across one and they would not pass verification. I did a binary file comparison using the Windows command line utility FC /B. There were several bytes that were inconsistent. I used a hex editor to correct them. Then they passed verification. If there is any way to connect straight to the motherboard, I really recommend it.
I don't trust them either. I use external cases that hold standard drives but at lest they have a tiny little chip that must be there to do something. I did have some in the past that would not support hard drives over 120GB.
Although I never had problems using them to make partitions the instructions always say that you are supposed to the partitioning and formatting before putting the drive in the case.
I use internal drives (standard like Dave) as backup drives but they are dropped in a couple of docking stations with eSata connections which is a direct connection to the motherboard.
Connected in this way I get a much faster performance than stuffed in a case.
I appreciate everybody's info and opinions. It's strange because it seems like it USED to work okay -- I've actually used the SATA to USB converter in the past to copy images out and deploy them, but then suddenly with this batch of Desktops it doesn't seem to want to play nice anymore.
I also did try doing a diskpart clean before posting to the forums, so I don't think that's it, unfortunately.
Unfortunately, connecting directly to the motherboard is a real pain -- I can use another desktop, but it defeats the purpose of rapid deployment if I have to reboot the machine with Ghost on it every time.
I have a SATA to eSATA cable coming in today so I'm hoping that will give me something more productive to work with. Otherwise I may have to get an eSATA docking station. Thanks for everybody's help.
If you have a Windows 7 SP1 system handy try using that to clean it and create the partition. SP1 contains an update for advanced format drives and that may be the problem. It may even work with the USB adapter, it will almost defiantly work with an eSATA adapter.
Once it's partitioned properly the Vista system should have no problems using it.