Windows 10: Windows Was Unable to Format This Drive - new 6 TB HGST drive

This drive is a retail DeskStar NAS 6 TB drive, which I just bought from the Egg. Previous experience with Hitachi, 3.5" and 2.5" has been uniformly positive, so I'm very loyal to the brand.*Smile

I always do a full format in Windows on every new drive. This is the first time I have gotten this sort of message. *Eek What does this message mean, and what is my next step?



:)

 

How Long to Full Format a 6TB Drive?

I finally found an answer to my original question.

When HGST Technical Support was in San Jose, California, the engineers were extremely knowledgeable. Unfortunately, after Western Digital acquired HGST, HGST technical support was moved to the
Dominican Republic. They seem unfamiliar with their hard drives. For example, I phoned about a HGST Deskstar NAS 6TB drive. The support person told me they did not have such a product. How can you not know about your own products.
Ugh

I then emailed asking, "Using the Windows 10 Disk Management snap-in with Full Format (Not Quick Format), how long does it take to format a HGST
Deskstar NAS 6TB drive?" They replied to say a few hours. Obviously, a wrong answer.

I phoned their competitor - Seagate. The Seagate engineer was located in California. He knew the answer immediately. He was very knowledgeable about this question and several others.

Around 12 hours / 1 TB, so 6TB is ~72 hours (3 days)

He also said that for their archive drives, Google does a Full Format for all their new hard drives. So even though the OS will auto mark bad sectors as it encounters errors, doing a Full Format is a more thorough verification according to Seagate.

It turns out that the motherboard SATA port which I was using had a read/write hardware issue. This explains the reason for the slow formatting of my new drive as you originally suggested.

Thank you for your help.

 

Windows 10 not initializing hdd

My friend get a new 4TB HGST drive. Drive is detected in BIOS. Drive is not displayed in disk management, device manager, or third party tools within windows. HGST driver tool does not detect the drive and will not install.

Only option I can think of is booting into install media and attempting a format to GPT from there. Are there any other routes to check that I'm missing?

 

Hi x509.

Are you using GPT or MBR? I think at that number, over 2TB, it has to be GPT.

Ken

 

What method were you using to attempt to format it? You should open a command prompt (admin) or powershell (admin) and the commands would be:

diskpart
list disk
select disk # <-replace # with the actual number for the 6 TB drive
clean <- this will erase everything on the disk selected above, make sure you selected the correct one!
convert gpt
create part pri
format fs=ntfs
assign
exit
exit

NOTE: a full format of a 6 TB drive may take several (3) days to complete.

 

format fs=ntfs quick (and it will not take several days to complete.) Everything else @NavyLCDR said is spot on.

 

To answer, I just checked with MiniTool Partition Manager and indeed the drive is set up as GPT. I had no problem with a Quick Format, it's just the full format that caused the issue.





If it takes several days to do the format, I will set my power plan on Always On.

 

What does the "assign" command do?

 

hi there

assign simply assigns the drive a letter so that your system will immediately recognize the drive.
With these large drives ensure there is enough power - the mobo bus on some older computers won't be up to it once you add things like USB 3 cards, more HDD's etc.

Also some BIOS's have a limit of max HDD size -- it's nothimg to do with the theoretical limit of the NTFS file size (around 16 EB EXABYTES !!!!!!) but simply the BIOS can't handle the HDD Geometry (physical nr of sectors, clusters etc etc --the physical HDD addresses).

That's why some of those external USB3/SATA HDD enclosures specify max HDD capacity too. Some of the cheaper one's only allow a Max HDD size of 4TB allowing for a RAID 0 array or JBOD - bunch of HDD's aggregated as single HDD of 8TB max (2 X 4 TB).

Cheers
jimbo

 

x509

I agree with NavyLCDR, a full format will take days. My 4TB took at least two as I recall. (the full format, not the quick)

Maybe, just maybe there is an error on drive. Not disagreeing with jimbo45, just saying maybe. Have a peak or test the drive with seatools from Seagate.

Your board appears to be "modern" technology. You might check if there is a BIOS update available from Asus. All the normal cautions around updating BIOS, understand the risks.


Ken

 

I usually tell people to plan around 12 hours or so per TB. So, 6TB would be around 72 hours ( 3 days).

 

Hi folks.

@pparks1

Have you tried what I do below --I know you are knowledgeable on Networks etc . !!! Also the BIOS must support handling large capacity HDD's -- File size not a problem NTFS can handle in theory EXABYTES but some BIOS'es cannot handle geometry of large HDD's (nr of sectors, clusters, physical track addresses etc) in some cases. 4 - 5 TB seems the sweet point on a load of machines greater than > 4 / 5 TB all sorts of problems begin to rear their ugly heads unless you have special HDD controllers.

With 6TB you are definitely out of typical home computers BIOS comfort zone on HDD's.

I know this is a Windows Forum but some people have some knowledge of Linux here --so if you don't want to spend 3 days on formatting an HDD. !!!!!

1) Download almost any Live Linux distro -- Linux mint is probably the easiest for novices / Windows users.

2) now format the drive with console command -- mkefs.ext4 /dev/sdx where x is the letter the drive linux sees.

To see what's mounted (the dev/sdx data) just from console type mount. You aren't going to use ext4 file system but you need an initial format of the HDD and ext4 works super fast.

Then you re-do for windows as NTFS using GPARTED as step 5.

3) that format (the ext4) will actually format the HDD really quickly.

4) now ensure package ntfs-3g is installed and also GPARTED.

Ntfs-3g is the Linux Read / write to windows NTFS file systems - it's usually installed by default but depending on your Live Distro it might not be/ Install with package manager -- CENTO / Red HAT --yum SUSE YAST, ubuntu /debian apt-get (or wget) etc etc.

5) run GPARTED and re-format HDD as NTFS.

Sorry folks for a Linux solution on Windows Forum --but I can't see ANYBODY wanting to run a Format job for 3 days.

You'll complete the job with above solution in about 15 - 35 mins !!!!!

Note I'm NOT anti Windows --far from it -- even hardened Linux users use Windows to diagnose a lot of hardware problems etc !!! My main Windows gripe is that I can never get Networking to actually be consistent - some machines work and others refuse resolutely to connect to any sort of network even if Hardware is identical. !!!!!!!

I just as an old fashioned Engineer believe in using the best tool for the job --I mean for example an abacus can yield the same calculation result as an EXCEL spreadsheet -- I know what I'd rather use. !!!!

Cheers.

jimbo

 

Can gparted format a 3tb drive as NTFS so that win7 and win10 can use it?

yes that worked great!

 

Ken, My board is an ASUS P9X79Pro, updated to the last available BIOS. And this board fully supports UEFI, AFAIK.
Later today, I will try to format this drive using the cmdline approach.

IF THAT DOESN'T WORK, does that mean that I have a defect and so I should return the drive to NewEgg?

I'll report back on if I'm successful or not (in several days ...)

 

I started this process today, after first changing the Power Plan to Always On, and then going into advanced settings for disk drive inactivity setting. I am actually using a USB 3 docking cradle that supports either size drive. It has two docks, so it can do a copy operation on its own. Manufacturer is Orico, and it has been reliable.

Even so, I left my system and then came back about 90 minnutes later. The drive was no longer spinning and the DISKPART format command still showed "0 percent completed.

I did not have this problem when I used the Windows format command. I should note that using this same hardware I have formatted a number of HGST 4 TB drives without incident.

I know someone suggested Linux, but I'd like to work with Windows.