If you are experiencing difficulty creating a partition on an ATA drive try the following troubleshooting steps.
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Check to make certain that all cable connections (power and data) are properly seated.
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Test the data (ribbon) cable by trying a different cable or try testing the cable with a known working drive.
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Make certain that the stripe on the side of ribbon cable aligns with pin-1 of the drive and pin-1 on the motherboard or ATA card connector. Pin-1 is always located on the side of the 40-pin connector that is closest to the power connector.
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Verify that the jumper settings are correctly configured. If the drive is to be a master then just the DS jumper should be installed and if the drive is to be slave then the jumper should be removed (and stored on the PK/parking position if available).
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If you are using a separate ATA controller card test it by using either a known good card or a known working drive.
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Check your system's CMOS (BIOS) settings. Make certain the drive is setup and being detected correctly. It is best to use the Auto-Detect feature if your system BIOS supports it.
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Make the disk drive the only drive device in the system and re-test. This will determine if a conflict exists with another disk or CDROM drive.
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Try running a diagnostic utility (assuming that the drive is spinning up). This will determine if you have a functioning drive.
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Try testing the disk drive in a different system if possible.
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