Formatting USB Drive Now, Q's

I am formatting a Lacie USb drive at the moment for NTFS. On Sony Vaio FZ. Using Disk Mgt, I identified the Lacie Drive. It shows as an Active Primary Partition. I right clicked selected Format, NTFS, Default Allocation on Disk Size, Checked Quick Format and Enable File Compression. The window for the Lacie drive showed Formatting in the window for a minute then went away. Am I still formatting or did I do something wrong. It is 500GB, so I don't know if default was the right choice on allocation.

Am I Ok, or will I need to reformat. How do I confirm it is still formatting?

Don't want to set multiple partitions, just one.


Thanks,

Ken

 

Normally when you format something using right click it stays open for the duration of the format, so I don't know what happened.

I would personally restart the format, using disk management. Control panel-->admin tools-->computer management-->disk management. You can see all your drives there and format, etc right on the spot. Plus it won't disappear randomly

 

Ackeron,

When I came back to the laptop I looked at the partition, and it said NTFS, Healthy Active Partition. My assumption was the Lacie is FAT32 formatted out of the box. Perhaps this usb drive for some reason was formatted NTFS or it only took a few minutes to Quick Format. I have been copying to it and opening the folders I copied. Made an image with Acronis. I may be OK. It just didn't do it in the time I expected for a usb transfer rate.

Thanks,

Ken

 

a quick format takes about 2-3 seconds usually dude

 

Thanks MaXimus777,

My incorrect impression was a lot longer on a 500GB drive. But, I am new to this stuff and learning. I guess I got lucky on my formatting choices for the Lacie USB Drive, all seems to be working. Now I can bother the Acronis Forum with newbie imaging and back up questions.

Thanks Again,


Ken

 

OOoo...it was already formatted, ok nevermind Yeah, wouldn't have taken long then. Still odd the window disappeared though.

 

Drive size has little impact on the time a Quick Format takes. All a QF does is rewrite the file catalog to indicate that no files are present -- it doesn't erase anything else, nor does it visit every sector of the drive like a full format does. So your experience is normal for a quick format, although I recommend people do a full format at least once on new drives, to identify & flag any possible bad sectors.

 

I did the quick format per Lacie's start up guide. Guess they don't want new customers waiting any longer than necessary to start copying, since they advertise being up and running in minutes. My problem was not looking to see whether the drive said NTFS or FAT32 when it started, and I never got a completed window to click OK on whenever the formatting finished. If I don't like the way I am copying my files at the moment, I may do a full format and start over. Any idea about how long that should take with a Lacie 500GB 7200rpm drive and usb cable?

Thanks,

Ken

 

Few hours probably. When I reinstalled Vista on my 160gb took like an hour to slow format the internal drive.

 

Thanks Ackeron,

Ken