Windows 10: Cannot Format New Drive

Well, here we go again. Another problem with another hard drive. I'm going to replace my existing 500GB OS drive in my Dell XPS-17 L702X with a 1TB drive. The drive is a "WD Black 1TB Performance Mobile Hard Disk Drive-7200 RPM SATA 6 GB/s 32 MB Cache 9.5 MM 2.5 Inch WD10JPLX", the exact same drive that I just replaced my laptop's secondary drive with. I have checked this new drive and it is working properly.

The new "secondary" 1TB drive was installed in the laptop and then formatted. It is working properly and I have experienced no problems with it, although I'll change it from "Active" to "Inactive" in the next few days, even though the "Active" configuration should not cause me any problems as my OS is going to boot from the primary OS drive. However, this new 1TB "primary" OS drive is in a "iDsonix Tool Free USB 3.0/2.0 to SATA 2.5/3.5 Inch Hard Drive Docking Station", as I am attempting to use Acronis True Image Home 2018 to clone my existing OS drive. I will then substitute the existing 500GB OS drive with this new 1TB cloned drive. The reason I don't want to just remove my old OS drive, install the new empty 1TB OS drive in the laptop and then install a fresh version of Windows 10 Pro x64 onto it after formatting it from within Windows 10 is because I use Office 365 and I have 27 email accounts on Outlook 2016, 25 of the accounts being Microsoft email accounts. It's a PITA to add 27 email accounts to Outlook 2016 since Microsoft changed its server system. I have to alter my registry before Windows will allow me to add all 25 Microsoft email accounts to the server. If I don't alter the registry I am limited to adding only 10 Microsoft accounts to its servers.

First problem: I cannot format the new drive while it's in the docking station. For some reason, when I do a "quick" format it shows as being formatted but Acronis cannot clone it. When I attempt to do the extended format it always gets to 3% and then the process stops. The drive is still listed in Disk Management when the extended formatting process stops. I then attempted to format it by letting Acronis format it during the cloning process but I get a message that Acronis cannot clone the disk.

What am I doing wrong? It's a new 1TB drive and it is working properly. Thank you in advance for your time and any assistance provided.

:)

 

Can't format USB 32GB drive in NTFS format

Having read several threads of how to Format a USB drive into NTFS format.

I have 32GB stick and tried several methods to do this without success.

Tried

• changing the properties of the 'policy' of the drive in device manager
• changing to 'default allocation unit size' in formatting
• changing from 'quick format'
• running as Admin with CMD Prompt and with ('drive letter': /fs:ntfs) this says cannot format a raw drive ??

Yet no problems in formatting as Fat32.

Any other tips

 

Format an external Drive.

Hello Roger,

Thank you for posting your concern in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

I would suggest you to follow the below steps to format the drive you are referring to.

• Right Click on Start menu and select Open Computer Management.
  
• 
  In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management.
  
• 
  Right-click the volume that you want to format, and then click Format.
  
• 
  To format the volume with the default settings, in the Format dialog box, click
  OK, and then click OK again.
  

Note: You cannot format a disk or partition that is currently in use, including the partition that contains Windows.

Hope it helps.

Thank you.