[SOLVED] Cannot Format HDD

[nswerhun]

As a Christmas gift, I received a new 6TB hard drive, however I was short one SATA cable. So, I unplugged one of the hard drives that was already in my computer to test the new drive to make sure that there is no issues. The person who gave it to me said he bought it off of eBay, and the sellers page said it was a new drive. This was not true, because it came pre-formatted as exFAT. I would like to format it to NTFS just to wipe out any remnants of whatever the seller had on the drive before, but as the title suggests, I cannot format it. I figured that I would figure it out later when the new SATA cable that I ordered comes. When I plugged back in the old drive, Windows was reading it as RAW. I fixed this by running chkdsk, and all information seems to be there, however, most of the programs I had loaded on the drive no longer work, they give me a variety of error codes. I thought I would just loose the data and format the drive, but now I cant format this drive either. For both drives, the 'Format' option in Disk Management is greyed-out. If there is a way to salvage the data on the old drive, that would be great, but it is not super important, and can be replaced. The old drive is 1TB (and is full) and I plan to keep it in my system and continue to use it. Any suggestions about how to format both of these drives is greatly appreciated.

 

[jojesa]

A drive might come formatted as exFAT to allow you to use it on different platforms (Mac, Windows & Linux)
Use Diskpart to delete the volume (clean) and format the HDD with NTFS.

Open Command Prompt, as administrator (type cmd on search box the click Run as administrator)
Type DiskPart and press Enter
Type list disk and press Enter
Type select disk # and press Enter (replace # with the number of the disk you want to format)
Type clean and press Enter (you could exit diskpart here and format with Disk Management)
Type list disk and press Enter (There should an asterisk (*) next to the selected drive.)
Type create partition primary and press Enter
Type select partition 1 and press Enter
Type active and press Enter
Type format FS=NTFS label=Disk quick and press Enter (replace Data with the name you want to give to the disk)
Type assign letter=Y and press Enter (replace y with the drive letter that you want to use)
Type exit and press Enter to close DiskPart.

 

[nswerhun]

A drive might come formatted as exFAT to allow you to use it on different platforms (Mac, Windows & Linux)
Use Diskpart to delete the volume (clean) and format the HDD with NTFS.

Open Command Prompt, as administrator (type cmd on search box the click Run as administrator)
Type DiskPart and press Enter
Type list disk and press Enter
Type select disk # and press Enter (replace # with the number of the disk you want to format)
Type clean and press Enter (you could exit diskpart here and format with Disk Management)
Type list disk and press Enter (There should an asterisk (*) next to the selected drive.)
Type create partition primary and press Enter
Type select partition 1 and press Enter
Type active and press Enter
Type format FS=NTFS label=Disk quick and press Enter (replace Data with the name you want to give to the disk)
Type assign letter=Y and press Enter (replace y with the drive letter that you want to use)
Type exit and press Enter to close DiskPart.

When I select the disk and type clean, it says:
Virtual Disk Service error:
Clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot,
system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume.

This is a secondary HDD, windows is on a separate SSD. I have no idea why any of that information would be stored on this drive.

 

[jojesa]

When I select the disk and type clean, it says:
Virtual Disk Service error:
Clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot,
system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume.

This is a secondary HDD, windows is on a separate SSD. I have no idea why any of that information would be stored on this drive.

What's the brand and model of the HDD?
That error message appears if are using diskpart to clean a system disk.
If by any happenstance you're getting this error on another disk then you will have to try to run diskpart outside the Windows environment.

You could do from the Advanced Startup Options Menu.
You could get there from a USB with the Windows installation media or by restating your PC.
(click the Start button, click Power, while pressing the shift key, click restart.

Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Command Prompt.
Type the diskpart command
list disk
select disk #
clean

 

[nswerhun]

What's the brand and model of the HDD?
That error message appears if are using diskpart to clean a system disk.
If by any happenstance you're getting this error on another disk then you will have to try to run diskpart outside the Windows environment.

You could do from the Advanced Startup Options Menu.
You could get there from a USB with the Windows installation media or by restating your PC.
(click the Start button, click Power, while pressing the shift key, click restart.

Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Command Prompt.
Type the diskpart command
list disk
select disk #
clean

I had a flash drive with Windows PE that I used to format the drive. The drive was then reading as 'Page File' in Disk Management, and because I didn't want all this to happen again, I removed the windows page file. I'll list my process here for any one having the same problem. Thank you for your help.

Process to remove paging file from a drive:

1. Press the Windows key and type 'This PC'.
2. Right-click 'This PC' and click Properties.
3. On the left side of the window, click 'Advanced system settings'.
4. Navigate to the 'Advanced' tab at the top of the window.
5. Under the 'Performance' subsection (should be the first one), click 'Settings'.
6. Navigate to the 'Advanced' tab at the top of this window.
7. Under the 'Virtual memory' subsection (should be the second one), click 'Change'.
8. Untick the 'Automatically manage paging... etc' box at the top of the window.
9. Select the drive with the paging file that you want to remove, click 'No paging file', then click 'Set'. You can click 'OK' on all menus. Done.

 

[jojesa]

Glad you were able to sort that out and to let us know about the page file.