External Hard Drive Assistance Requested

Hey everyone,

Seems I have an issue on my hands that I would love to get some advice on. After extensively searching for a solution, I have not come to a decisive answer.

I have purchased an Office Depot clearance (new in box and sealed) Western Digital My Book Office Edition 1TB drive. As I suspected, my luck of the Irishman has come through. I read and followed all directions to the letter to ensure that I could plug-in and format it to NTFS. After numerous attempts on my Vista G2S and a single attempt on my EEE, it has failed. When I attempt to do a full reformat, it fails at about an hour or two with "An error has occurred, this drive cannot be formatted."

So, I looked up formatting information and found that a full format does a check disk along with the format, thus the huge period of time. So I did a quick NTFS format and now it works. The included WD drive software says the SMART status is fine. I did a quick scan from within this software, and again, it says "Pass". I am currently running a full check disk from my EEE, and so far 50% at Phase 5 with no issues. I plan on running the extended test from within the WD application as well.

Does the fact that it will not complete the built-in full reformat mean there is a disk error somewhere? And even if these two check disk procedures do not find it, I should send it in? The quick format had no issues and *knock on wood* the first check disk task has found nothing, so far. I do not mind having it RMA'd, but just wondering if that failure of the full format could be something else.

Thank you for your time and I appreciate your comments.
-Gen

Edit: I forgot to mention that when ever I did a format, I would go to My Computer, right click on the drive and hit format. I did not use the admin tools disk management, a command line command, or did I boot into safe mode to do it. Should I do those and try again after both scans?

 

I had the same issue with my 500 gig WD and did a quick format also. Unfortunately I can't explain why this happens, but I haven't had any problems with my drive and it's over a year old.

 

Hmm, thanks for the info. I got fed up after all these scans to asked for an RMA unit. I think I will cancel it and eat the shipping. I was surprised they were taking calls (India), but it was nice to talk to somebody. I have just tried another full format. If it doesn't go through, quick format and then a WD full scan. Thanks for your post.

 

I think you have to follow a specific formatting procecure that WD has on their website. I remember reading it a short time ago.

Here's an excerpt from the user manual they have on the website.

Drive Format
This WD device is preformatted as a single FAT32 partition for compatibility with all
updated Windows and Macintosh operating systems. The FAT32 file system has a
maximum individual file size of 4 GB.
This WD device cannot create partitions larger than 32 GB in Windows 2000/XP.
Windows 2000 and XP users can overcome these file size limitations by reformatting
the drive to NTFS using the Disk Management utility. See answer ID 1287 at
support.wdc.com and article IDs 314463 and 184006 at support.microsoft.com for
further details.
Reformatting the Drive
1. Go to support.wdc.com.
2. See Knowledge Base Answer ID 207 for formatting instructions.
After formatting, go to Downloads, find your product, download the My Book utility,
and follow instructions as prompted.

 

He is trying to format it to NTFS so the above has nothing to do with his problem.

 

I appreciate your responses. It seems after nearly 3 days of tests it is cool. I learned that a full format does more than a quick format and check disk, of sorts. It marks the bad sectors so they are NOT used in the future, thus leading to less corruption. It does not warrant against full failure and such, but it does reduce data issues. My RMA was already sent, so I shall cancel it. I have already copied about 350GB to it with no issues, average transfer apx. 18 mb/s...not bad for the green.

Edit: I did end up doing a full format via My Computer dialog, a full check disk, then another full format via Disk Management. All NTFS and no errors after the independent check disk.

 

If you have bad sectors on a new drive i would send it in to be replaced anyways. This should not be happening. Bad sectors are usually an indication of a dieing drive.

 

Aw. Well, I will run a WD check and a standard check as I deleted my old results. Thanks for the info

 

New Update:

Whew, just got done with a two full scans; one WD and another standard chkdsk. No bad sectors or such, so I should be fine, bad sectors would have showed up if present.? Here is a shot of the results. Thank you for all your help.