Ran into problem trying to format friend's hard drive - could really use some help!

A friend of mine got a 500GB WD Scorpio Black and an enclosure from some company I'd never heard of (it was the only pink one she could find - Cavalry CAUG). I installed the drive tonight and went to format it through Computer Management in Vista (made the mistake of opting out of the quick format for peace of mind). For a while I thought it wasn't working at all, but then after about an hour and a half it jumped up to a whopping 1% ( hard drive | Flickr - Photo Sharing!). I know it shouldn't be taking this long, so I have a couple of questions...

1) Any ideas on what the problem may be? The enclosure came with a USB Y-cable, but I can only plug one in at a time since I don't have two ports close enough together on my laptop. Could that be making a difference? The enclosure manual says that plugging in both cables is optional "to ensure the drive receives enough power."

2) If I don't figure out a way to speed things up, how can I safely unplug the drive before it's done formatting? At the rate it's been going it would take over 6 days to complete and I can't afford to have it plugged into my computer for that long. Would right click - Cancel Format work? From what I've read that doesn't always do the trick...

Thanks for any help!

 

Yes you can unplug it fine. I would definitely try getting it some more juice though lol. Many times if the drive isnt getting enough power it wont even spin up.

Then again enclosures from any brand, can suck or fail. Why do I say any brand? Pick your favorite brand, they bought it from the same company thats selling the cheaper knock off. I have heard of Cavalry, would probably buy from em, doesnt mean anything.

Unplug it, find something else to format it with or power for that matter. Any USB wall plug like chargers? whatever u can find to get some more power. Not enough power, bad enclosure electronics, failing drive. Lastly bad cable, you can power it with any USB cable, but ANY usb cable wont work either. I have some short ones that do it, long ones that work and alot that dont. Other thing is do a quick format unless you actually think the drive has issues. You can scan disk later.

 

When you're formatting without a 'Quick Format' you are simply writing data to the drive. (With the 'data' being 'zeros').

The rate of the write is @ USB (slow....) speeds.

Find a computer with a spare internal port to connect it to and format it there.

It will still take a long time, but much, much faster than through USB2.0.

Good luck.

 

From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686 Which just happens to be the XP setup reference, its the same and can be found in other kb articles.

Not trying to be a jerk. But writing 0's would take a LOT longer. Not 100% if it even bothers erasing anything other than file tables, even doing the first and last 2kb of each file would take alot longer than quick format does.

 

90 minutes for 1% isn't USB2.0 slow...that's "something is wrong" slow.

That being said...you probably need to plug both USB ports of the Y-cable in as it sounds like the drive isn't getting enough power at all. If you're short on USB ports you can use a powered USB hub (one with an AC port...yes I know that kind of defeats the purpose) so that you can at least try to prove the drive is okay.

 

Quick Format only deletes the directory entries. The files are still there to be recovered.

Full Format writes '0' to each addressable space. Does not need to erase anything (you're thinking SSD's?). Also, as suggested, checks for bad sectors and maps them out.

Yeah, anything with USB is really slow - and I'll agree at the 'something is broken level' slow. But it is simply trying to do a full format through USB2.0 on a huge HDD.

If the drive was not getting enough power, then it wouldn't even have shown 1% done (it would have timed out long before that...). There could be other issues, but I don't think that more juice would help here.

Good luck.

 

A full format doesn't write zeros to all addressable space. A full format erases the file tables just like a quick format, and then it performs a disk check. The scan is what takes up the majority of the time.

Using third-party software like DBAN will write data (either all 1's, all 0's, or a random pattern) to the disk.

 

Anyone can confirm the 'yes'/'no' of that ? Not that it matters to me but I believe many people including me thought that full format would overwrite the full partition with 0's which in many case is used as a quick and cheap(free) 'erase drive content'.

 

According to the windows documentation the only difference is the disk check. I in the last 13 years have never observed otherwise. i have written related software but never in conjunction with NTFS and things change so i could be out of date as of say windows 7 beta. A quick test is doing a file recovery with a free tool like recuva. Winhex can mount partitions and physical drives for byte by byte looks. Eitherway i can link you 100 plus documents that say what i say. I was gonna take this to pms and actually help show whats going on but i am going to stop short of coding an entire application for this. I have no issue with finding out if im wrong but only so much time to put into it. sorry im on my phone at the movies atm

 

Seems that it has been changed since Vista

Change in the behavior of the format command in Windows Vista

 

Thank you, I did a quick search on my phone and found something similar. Formatting disks and drives

So yes it appears it has changed for Vista and newer users. Surprised I never saw what you just gave me before. Its one of those things I SHOULD be aware of and was not. I had to switch to a netbook to post links, cant wait till i get a new phone.

I apologize as I intended to fully research the issue when I got home and never went home. Which is why I never posted anything until you asked.

Once again apologies to those who knew. It was never suggested it had changed, only it was. Thanks again.

 

Thanks for all the quick responses!

After I posted the other night I tried plugging in the second USB through my phone's USB to AC adapter and that didn't help at all. After that I disconnected the drive and tried doing a quick format, which was completed in a matter of seconds. I then tried doing a full format again, and ran into the same problem of seeing next to zero progress.

Now, after another quick format, I'm running a check for errors through Properties -> Tools -> Error-checking. I'm not really sure if that would necessarily even detect any possible problems, but either way I'm still sketched out by the fact that I couldn't run a complete format.

Any ideas on why this would be happening? A few months ago I put a 1TB Spinpoint F3 in a Vantec enclosure and did a full format... it may not have been the quickest process in the world but didn't take longer than a few hours.