hey, tied everything other than throwing it onto the laptop to see if would work on that. i tried it in the 600hd to no avail, but i tried the 20mb hd from the 600 in the 1200 and it boots no problem. im assuming the drive faulty and returning it to the guy for a refund, it was sold as being full of progs and games anyway so if it had to be re-formatted it would have been a waste of money (paid slightly more). cheers for the help anyway