problems with formatting hard drive

I recently reinstalled windows xp pro and partitioned the disk into C,D, and D drives. I have formatted the C and D drives with NTFS and have installed data on both but I am unable to format the E drive, getting the message that windows is unable to complete the format. I am using a Western Digital 180 Gb Caviar hard drive which requires that I use the enclosed ATA 100 controller card for the OS to recognize all of the disk. The E partition that will not format contains 42 Gb. Check disk does not find any errors on the disk and the utility disk that comes with the hard drive reports no problems with the hard drive at all. Does anyone have any idea as to why I am having this problem and how I can fix it without reinstalling the entire drive again?