Comment 20 for bug 1547286

Short answer: I was able to fix this issue by plugging my hard drive into another SATA connection on the motherboard.

Long answer: I tried potential fixes listed in responses 11, 17, and 18 but it still didn't work. Gparted recognized the drive, but wouldn't allow me to create a partition table or format due a sych failure. I had issues in the past with some of the SATA connections on the motherboard before (ASUS M4A89TD Pro Series) so I just moved the connection from 5 to 0 (there are 6 connections directly on the motherboard). Not sure of the underlying cause for other users, but for me it was the SATA connection or BIOS setting on the motherboard preventing me from formatting or partitioning the hard drive but still allowing Ubuntu to recognize it was there.