I can not format my hard drive

axels01

Reputable
Jun 21, 2015
110
0
4,680
I have a 1TB hard drive, not my OS disk or anything, I just need to format it for something.
I have tried to format it just from the "File Explorer" won't work, formating from the "Disk Management" wont work. Trying to "Delete" the disk in Disk Manager wont work, what do I do, pleas help!
 
Solution


No problem, always nice when problems are solved!

- Joe
What is the status of the drive?

In Disk Management, there's the top panel and the bottom panel. The top has a grid and the bottom has the disks with some boxes. Above, I see things like this:

Windows ( C: ) Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (Boot, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) 232.79GB (and some values about disk usage)
Storage ( D: ) Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition) 4889.8GB
System Reserved Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)

What does your disk say? How is your disk connected, is it internal via SATA or is it external via USB, or external via something else?

It must say Healthy (Primary Partition) with only "Primary Partition" inside parentheses. If it says "Active", "System", "Page File", "Boot", or "Crash Dump" in there then you can't delete the volume.

Now, if it does say only "Primary Partition" then you should be able to format it. If it's internally attached, then you should be able to right-click the partition in the bottom panel and select "Delete Volume." From there you'll get unallocated space, right click on that and "Create Volume." You can then choose how much to allocate and what to format it with.

If it says "Page File" and "Primary Partition" but nothing else then you need to go and change your page file setup. Right click "Computer", choose "Properties" then on the left panel select "Advanced system settings". Under "Performance" hit "Settings" and go to the "Advanced" tab then hit the "Change button" under "Virtual memory." If necessary, deselect the "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" check box and then select the drive you want to format. With that drive active, select the "No paging file" radio button and hit "Set." Ensure that at least one of your other drives has either a "Custom size" or "System managed size" selection so that in the drive selection grid the "Paging File Size (MB)" isn't all "None" values. Now hit OK, OK, OK and reboot. At this point you should be able to delete the volume you wanted as it should show up as having only the "Primary Partition" label in the disk management.

If it's an external drive, some do not let you make changes in this way. I'm not sure exactly why, but my guess is because the drive isn't connected natively and the USB to SATA controller is blocking certain commands.

Also worth trying is to select the partition in disk management and right click it. Select "Change drive letter and path" and remove the drive letter. If it won't let you, then the drive is currently in use and that's why you can't format it. The error box should explain why. Perhaps the change would be saved for the next boot, so make the change and reboot to see if it loads without the drive letter. From there you may be able to partition and format it.

Also, why do you need to do this? Sometimes it's not necessary to format a drive. If you have a 931GB NTFS partition and want to make a new 931GB NTFS partition, all you really need to do is delete everything. Just be sure to show hidden files and you should be able to delete everything. If it can't delete a file, it tells you that it's in use so this would also explain why you can't delete the volumes or reformat the partition. If you want to change the file system but not the size then you also don't need to be in disk management to do that. If you want to put a non-Windows partition on it, you need to do that outside Windows as Windows only knows exFAT, NTFS, and FAT32.
 
http://imgur.com/PFwT4Ty This is what it looks like, I don't know why but it says "System" on the drive I want to format, why dose it say that and is there any way to get around it and still delete it or format it? I have used it as a Backup drive but since then I have switched from Win 7 to Win 10 and it no longer says that the drive is or has ever been selected as a backup drive.
 


Ok so I have put around 7 or so GB of random bull on there, I'll restart and lets see what happens
 


Nope it still says "Healthy (system)", is there any way out of this?
 
Try this:

1. Open a command prompt as administrator.
2. Run Diskpart application by typing Diskpart in the command prompt.
3. In the “Diskpart” prompt, enter rescan command and press Enter key to re-scan all partitions, volumes and drives available.
4. Then type in list disk and press Enter key to show all hard disk drive available.
5. Select the disk that contains the partition you want to remove. Normally, with just 1 hard disk, it will be disk 0. So the command will be:
Select disk 0
Finish by Enter key.
6. Type list partition and press Enter key to show all available and created partition in the disk selected.
7. Select the partition that wanted to be deleted by using the following command, followed by Enter key:
Select partition x
Where x is the number of the recovery partition to be removed and unlocked its space. Be careful with the number of this partition, as wrong number may get data wipes off.
8. Finally, type in delete partition override and press Enter key.
 
Download GParted and burn the iso to a CD.
Shut down your PC.
Normally I would remove all the drives I'm not working on for safety but if you have an ASUS motherboard it may make things a little wonky.
Restart your PC and continuously press F12 untill your boot menu pops up and boot from cd/dvd drive.
It will ask you a series of setup questions for language/keyboard map.
Once you start GParted, delete any partition that is already on the drive.
Then hit apply (you will have to hit apply after every action)
Then go to partition table and write a new "GPT" partition table to the drive.
Hit apply
Then right click the drive and select new partition.
select "ntfs" and give it a size and a name.
hit ok, then apply.
Exit GParted and shut down your computer.
Replug in all of your drives (to the same connections they were before)
Restart your PC (if you have an asuse motherboard you may have to tell it which drive has windows on it)
Boom! Your new hard drive is ready!
 


Ok, what do I do? http://imgur.com/KTxYJoa I got this screen after typing PARTITION as it said.
 
I did all the steps, the last step I did that you mentioned was "delete partition override" and it gave me there options
"DISK -Delete a missing disk from the disk list"
"PARTITION ->Delete the selected partition" I selected "PARTITION" and it gave me like 20 or some options.
"VOLUME -Delete the selected volume"
 


Try the FORMAT command
 


In the 20 or so options there were "CLEAN"
I did that and the message I got back was

"Virtual Disk Service error:
Clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot,
system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume."

If relevant I'm running windows 10
 
Tried "FORMAT" gave me the exact same message as when I was trying to do the "CLEAN"


"Virtual Disk Service error:
Clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot,
system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume."
 
Ok, well at least weve got a reason why its giving you so much hassle. There's something on it that causing the system to think its vital.

I wonder.. have you tried physically disconnecting the HDD and booting the PC with it out?
 


No I haven't, so basically just remove the drive start the pc log in and connect the HDD?
 


Turn off - Disconnect the SATA cable to the HDD, but leave the power cable in - Turn on.

If the PC boots fine, reconnect the SATA cable and restart.

Try the format process again - maybe it just might have an effect!
 


It worked, thanks allor for you time
 


No problem, always nice when problems are solved!

- Joe
 
Solution

TRENDING THREADS