external usb drive is taking 6+ hours to format!

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Gabe3

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I just got a new fantom 500gb usb drive in today and started the ntfs format about 6 hours ago with vista disk management, disk management just gave me a percentage a minute ago of 33%. I did a long format, not a quick.

EDIT: it just now went from 33% to 34% so I'm canceling the format, this is pathetic.

EDIT2: I canceled the format and it's still going, up to 35% now, WTF is going on.

EDIT3: i turned off the power to the drive, then did a quick format and that worked, but now I'm thinking maybe something is wrong with this drive since it took forever to do a full format.

to let you guys know this thread is a few months old
 
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That does seem a bit long for a format but remember that your drive is connected via the USB bus so it will be slower than if you had a 500GB drive connected through SATA.
 
My green 1tb took 3-4 hours to format with sata connection. I don't see the problem here.

Just leave it on overnight, not like you have to reformat any time soon.
 
I used to always do full formats when I first got my drives, but ever since I started using 500+ GB drives I just do quick format lol. Try doing a full format on a 1.5TB external drive :eek:.
 
yeah, I haven't done a full format in a loooong time. Last time I did took a while on a 250 gigger.
 
The speed of the connection is irrelevant basically as the format command is just telling the drive to do the job - the PC isn't actively watching every sector of data be overwritten. If you've got a terabyte drive and you actually go the route of a full normal format, you're gonna be waiting for a long time, regardless of machine or connection bus, it just takes a long damned time.

QuickFormat... works just fine. If you encounter problems later on with the drive you'll know it...
 
Thanks for the info. I'm going to try another full format today. I loaded 2gb worth of videos on the drive lastnight and it started off at 150mb/sec for about 2 seconds but slowed down to 10mb/sec. Is this a normal speed?
 
150MB/s is impossible for USB 2.0, unless if your drive is connected via eSATA or something, but then again hard drives don't get that kind of speed.

It's probably burst speed that your OS is reporting, it'll go down quickly.
 
Syntax Error said:
150MB/s is impossible for USB 2.0, unless if your drive is connected via eSATA or something, but then again hard drives don't get that kind of speed.

It's probably burst speed that your OS is reporting, it'll go down quickly.
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like i said it slowed down to 10mb/sec after a couple seconds, is 10mb/sec normal?

I started the format again, its only going at about 5% per hour, so at that rate, it's going to take 19 hours. surely i got a defective drive?
 
Gabe3 said:
like i said it slowed down to 10mb/sec after a couple seconds, is 10mb/sec normal?

I started the format again, its only going at about 5% per hour, so at that rate, it's going to take 19 hours. surely i got a defective drive?
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Something is wrong, my wd mybook 1tb took 5-6 hour to format
 
sskk said:
Something is wrong, my wd mybook 1tb took 5-6 hour to format
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this thread is a couple months old, lol. yeah it did appear to be a defective drive, or fantom enclosures just suck, I returned it, got my money back. I ended up building my own with a antec case and WD 640gb drive. I cant remember how long it took to format, i think like 3-4 hours. It's been working great so far. I copy to it at 30 mb/sec. The crap fantom did 10 mb/sec.
 
vista's time left reporting can be misleading. please just do as suggested and let it go overnight.

and next time- quick format works great 99% of the time. its not like youre zero filling the drive with a full format- the actual benefits over quick are minimal in most cases.
 
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