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Formatting question

S

shantd

Gawd
Joined
Aug 2, 2008
Messages
665
Just bought me a Hitachi 2TB internal HDD. I've never owned a drive that's in the terabytes before, so I'm wondering if there's anything special that needs to be done to format it. The reason I'm asking is I've tried to format it from within Vista and it fails, using both the "quick format" and the standard (long) option. I then tried formatting it using Acronis Disk Director and it fails with the error message "disk write error".

So either I've got a bad drive or there's something I don't know about formatting large drives...which is it?

Thanks
 
Recommend using manufacture software to do any formatting. What you’re doing in Vista is called high-level formatting. Try LLF (low level format), not common in most situations, usually manufacture does this LLF function. There are freeware out there online that will do LLF function. MS-DOS will also do a low level format.

If that doesn't work then I would say you got a bad drive. But if that works then re-format to NTFS file formatting using high-level format.
 
I've never had to do LLF before, although when you commit to the formatting process it restarts the system and does the actual formatting outside of the OS, so maybe it's doing llf as well? Doubt it though, since the process is very quick.

But to be clear, the size of the drive has no impact here?
 
This was using Computer Management / Disk Management? Did yu make a simple volume and then format?
 
Yeah, that's precisely what I did. And it's getting weirder, because I figured the drive was bad and replaced it for the same model. Brought it back home and tried to format again, same damn thing.

I've had bad drives before, but never 2 bad drives back to back right out of the box. What's the deal?? Maybe I should try the LLF...

Have any of you formatted a 2TB drive with either the windows Vista format option or Acronis with no trouble?
 
Might be an issue with your bios detecting a drive that large. What ports are you plugging it into? Onboard the mobo or a pci(e) card? If on the mobo then look for a new bios update for it.
 
Yeah I'm plugged into one of the sata ports on the mobo. It sees that the drive is 1.8TB, but when it gets around half way, it fails. I've been looking around online and it seems a lot of people have problems formatting drives larger than 1TB, so I guess it does have something to do with the size. Now to figure out the next step...
 
Unexpected resolution. Lots of people complained in various forums of this exact same issue, drives larger than 1TB fail the format process even using 3rd party utilities. I saw 2 separate posts from people who said they downloaded a formatting utility called EaseUS Partition Master and it formatted it, no problem. Sure enough it worked like a charm.

I don't understand why it would fail in Windows and Acronis but not Easus. Formatting is a relatively straight forward process. Anyway, if you build your own rigs, store this one in your memory banks.
 
enieves137 said:
Recommend using manufacture software to do any formatting. What you’re doing in Vista is called high-level formatting. Try LLF (low level format), not common in most situations, usually manufacture does this LLF function. There are freeware out there online that will do LLF function. MS-DOS will also do a low level format.

If that doesn't work then I would say you got a bad drive. But if that works then re-format to NTFS file formatting using high-level format.
Click to expand...

Actually, there has not been real low-level formatting available since ATA drives shipped. That is done at the factory or via a TTL connection to the drive firmware. What you are calling a low-level format is just simply writing to every byte that is presented as available by the drive. If the drive is failing in Windows to format, something is wrong. What motherboard and BIOS rev are you running? Which port on that motherboard is it connected to?
 
^ See the post above yours, but to answer your question, there are 4 ports on the mobo, 2 of which are blue. It's on one of those blue ones. It's not slaved to the system drive, if that makes any difference.

I'm kinda surprised nobody here has mentioned this happening to them. It seems like everybody who tries to format large drives (>1TB) complain of this on a google search. Look at these guys, damn near word for word same issue as me:

http://www.computing.net/answers/hardware/cannot-partition-2tb-hard-drive-above-1tb/58503.html

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19277218.aspx

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...t-format/17f887ee-7689-4dc3-9237-ee7f3af2dfbd
 
shantd said:
^ See the post above yours, but to answer your question, there are 4 ports on the mobo, 2 of which are blue. It's on one of those blue ones. It's not slaved to the system drive, if that makes any difference.

I'm kinda surprised nobody here has mentioned this happening to them. It seems like everybody who tries to format large drives (>1TB) complain of this on a google search. Look at these guys, damn near word for word same issue as me:

http://www.computing.net/answers/hardware/cannot-partition-2tb-hard-drive-above-1tb/58503.html

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19277218.aspx

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...t-format/17f887ee-7689-4dc3-9237-ee7f3af2dfbd
Click to expand...

The posts that you point to are 3 years old. When 2TB drives first shipped there were issues, same with 3TB and 4TB. Older hardware that didn't support it. You sstill haven't told us which exact motherboard and BIOS rev you are using.
 
Not sure quite frankly, it's a gateway about 2 years old. I can tell you that I was able to to see the drive and all 2 TB with no problem in the bios. If it was a hardware/BIOS issue, then how is it that Easeus was able to format it, and now the drive is seen just fine in Vista?
 
Regardless of whether easus worked or not, the drive is managed by windows and if you can't successfully format it in windows then something is wrong.
 
I would tend to agree...so what's wrong? I've been building rigs for over 10 years now, I can tell you this is absolutely the first time I've ever had an issue formatting a hard drive. The only thing different this time is the size of the drive, so that's gotta be the issue.
 
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