Can't get my RAW external hard drive formatted please Help

[junior10]

I am looking for help with my 1tb external hard drive. I have tried windows vista and 7 to reformat but both attempts have been unsuccessful. My hdd is showing up as RAW. I do not care about recovering the files that are on it I would simply like to just be able to use my hard drive again.
I have been reading multiple threads but have not been able to come up with a solution.
here is what i have tried
1) going to cmd and running checkdisk on my drive and it was unable due to RAW format of drive
2) Tried going to my computer right click on drive and do a quick format did not work
3) i tried running an error check through right clicking the hdd and going through properties but was unsuccessful due to windows cannot access the disk.
4) i have tried uninstalling/ reinstalling but did not work.
5) I have tried to change drive letters and delete volume in an attempt to formet but was not able to
6) tried using disc management and right clicking to format was not able due to "the request could not be performed because of an i/o device error"
Maybe this is my answer right here but again this is why im posting this because im not sure what else i could try.
the hdd is spinning like normal, there are no unusual sounds, the light on the usb cable is on.


I sincerely appreciate any help that i can get and hopefully someone knows a way to resolve this issue Thank You!

 

[smorizio]

if the drive and drive controller card on the ext is fine you may had a damaged partion or master boot record. i would get some drive tools and do a fdisk/mbr of the drive that your having problems with the do an fdisk and remove the partion on the drive and make a new one. with a dos partion your drive should now format with out any issues. if it still wont format if it in warranty i would rma it. if it out you can try and pull the drive from the case and plug it into mb and see if it works then.

 

[Hawkeye22]

You can try running diskpart and issuing the clean command on the selected drive, though the I/O error doesn't sound promising.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

 

[junior10]

Hawkeye I am looking into your suggestion thank you.
Smorizio when i was in cmd i noticed it said there were bad sectors on the hdd I will be looking into the partitions on it Thanks

 

[CanB]

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but I'm in the exact same situation. I'd done a low level format of the drive and have diskpart to format and failed.

Tried testdisk to rebuilt fat table and failed. Have to delete the log due to the size is somewhere near 64GB.

The drive can be recognized with both my XP and Win7 machine, listed as healthy but raw.

I think somehow the LLF wiped everything including the fat table and the backup fat table. Is there a way to rebuild everything from scratch?

 

[kmiller96541]

Western Digital makes a free program called Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows. It works on all drives I have tried it on. It has a feature called "Write Zeros". Again, works on most drives. I use it to TOTALLY remove all data, rootkits, viruses, partitions, and MBRs from drives I want to prep for a reload. I would write zeros to the whole drive, not just the beginning and the end. Then try to format. You may need to "Initialize" the drive first. If it does not format or work after a zero wipe, the drive is probably dead. Sorry.

 

[junior10]

Kmiller thanks for the info i actually have plugged it into an old desktop running Windows ME (Millenium Edition) and was able to format the drive. the only thing im concerned about now is that it was formatted in exFat and i cant convert to ntfs. My drive has been working fine with the exfat format but im just not ready to completely trust transferring all my data to it just yet.

 

[junior10]

CanB i was able to create a new partition is disk management have you tried that? if you need help just reply.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Hawkeye I am looking into your suggestion thank you.
Smorizio when i was in cmd i noticed it said there were bad sectors on the hdd I will be looking into the partitions on it Thanks

I don't think I'd trust a drive with bad sectors. Checking the SMART status should tell you if there are pending sectors.

 

[junior10]

Hawkeye22 Yeah thats exactly what i am thinking i am currently making new partitions on the hdd 200gb per partition and i will run tests on it like that to narrow down which part of the drive has bad sectors hopefully it is just a small portion and i will have most of my tb hdd to still hold data. I hope this process works at this point i am just trying anything i can. If i can narrow it down to a particular section i might just leave the partition in tact and remember not to store any data on it or delete the volume and leave it as unallocated on the hdd

 

[junior10]

Also I tried using seatools to repair my sectors but it was unsuccessful and also tried right clicking and check for errors which also failed. Thanks Hawkeye22 for the responses

 

[dbharry]

I am looking for help with my 1tb external hard drive. I have tried windows vista and 7 to reformat but both attempts have been unsuccessful. My hdd is showing up as RAW. I do not care about recovering the files that are on it I would simply like to just be able to use my hard drive again.
I have been reading multiple threads but have not been able to come up with a solution.
here is what i have tried
1) going to cmd and running checkdisk on my drive and it was unable due to RAW format of drive
2) Tried going to my computer right click on drive and do a quick format did not work
3) i tried running an error check through right clicking the hdd and going through properties but was unsuccessful due to windows cannot access the disk.
4) i have tried uninstalling/ reinstalling but did not work.
5) I have tried to change drive letters and delete volume in an attempt to formet but was not able to
6) tried using disc management and right clicking to format was not able due to "the request could not be performed because of an i/o device error"
Maybe this is my answer right here but again this is why im posting this because im not sure what else i could try.
the hdd is spinning like normal, there are no unusual sounds, the light on the usb cable is on.


I sincerely appreciate any help that i can get and hopefully someone knows a way to resolve this issue Thank You!

I had the same problem with a 2TB external drive. It took forever to format, then even when it read 100% formatted it still wouldn't finish. I tried to format again as exFAT, and it took all of about 3 seconds for that to work. Since then the drive has been great. exFAT may not be quite as flexible as NTFS, but for most folks, and certainly for me, the differences are nil.

 

[dowatnow]

Hi All,

Don't mean to interrupt of hijack the thread, have the exact same issue as that of junior10 on 2 HDDs 🙁( and both of them have data that I would want to recover. Tried several things but none worked. On one of the HDDs the format worked and was able to run a data recovery software to recover some part of the data.
But the second HDD does not format at all.
I would want to know if there is any way one can run the FIX MBR command on Win 7.!!?
Kindly help out.
Also the software that I used to recover data from one of the HDDs is Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Professional

Regards
Dowatnow

 

[fitacola]

i got the same problem as OP. managed to format it to FAT32 but erros continue to apear, like it siconecting for no reason. Garbage with it then