Question I can't low-level format a USB drive ?

[jsmith200]

I have a Seagate Backup Plus portable drive with 1T capacity. After not using it for close to a year, I plugged it in to a USB port. Windows 10 said it couldn't recognize the drive. So, I downloaded Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool (version 4.40) and did a full format. It encountered a problem and stopped at a specific sector (over 1M) for over 10 hours. I shutdown the PC, restarted it, and re-formated the drive. Again, the program stopped at the exactly same sector. Is there anyway to rescue the hard disk or it's time to ditch it?

 

[Krotow]

Seems you are trying to solve wrong problem. Main issue is USB port with not enough power output to suffice demand for your external drive. Thus drive simply cannot start and operate properly. Plug it into another USB port or even in different computer - in one of them it must pop up. Also formatting is not that hard. Format it again by quick format enabled and you are good.

 

[jsmith200]

Seems you are trying to solve wrong problem. Main issue is USB port with not enough power output to suffice demand for your external drive. Thus drive simply cannot start and operate properly. Plug it into another USB port or even in different computer - in one of them it must pop up. Also formatting is not that hard. Format it again by quick format enabled and you are good.

Thanks for the reply. The formatting stopped after several hours and at 58% completion. Since the drive had run for several hours before stopping, I believe the USB port had been providing enough power to the drive and the problem is the drive, not the power.

I did try on two different computers. The 58% result was obtained on the second computer. I forgot what result I got from the first computer. Probably the drive was not recognized at all.

I thought one of the function of low lever formatting is to mapped out bad sectors. In my case, the formatting process simply stopped. I'd never heard of such a problem before. What could be worse than bad sectors to stop the formatting process?

Another observation is that during the first attempt to format the drive, the formatting rate was 1.7 Mb/s, which was extremely slow. The formatting would have taken 5 days if it had not stopped automatically. During the second attempt, the formatting rate was 24Mb/s. These two attempts were done on the same computer. Not sure where the discrepancy came from other than the drive is really having problems.

 

[Krotow]

58% completion and 1,7 MB/s on USB drive look like full surface format attempt. There is no need for full format - quick format is sufficient for 99,99...% cases. Even on USB drive it happen very fast. If you are formatting the drive from Windows, format dialog have "Quick Format" checkbox. Enable it before formatting. A legit instruction exactly for you.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_izOIbdrkPY


If anything else fail, you can still take drive out of enclosure, connect to computer and format it here. It will certainly rule out any USB oddities. Drive inside enclosure is regular SATA drive. Do not break the case and get some thin double sided tape to close the case after drive formatting.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWRttonfzIc

 

[jsmith200]

So, inside the Seagate drive, there is a 2.5" drive like those found on laptops? If so, I wonder why these USB backup drives fail so often and quickly? I have thrown away two of these backup drives. They barely last for two years while a laptop drive would last for at least four years.

I'm doing a low level format, not full format nor quick format. After the low level format, I'll need to create a partition and format it.

 

[Krotow]

So, inside the Seagate drive, there is a 2.5" drive like those found on laptops?

Yes, it is usual practice. Nowadays external drives with NVMe drive inside enclosure become common as well. Faster and have less power demand related connectivity problems. However it come with pretty steep price increase.

I'm doing a low level format, not full format nor quick format. After the low level format, I'll need to create a partition and format it.

Still have no idea why usual drive partitioning would require low level format. Except wiping drive contents for security reasons it will not give any benefit. Didn't used low level HDD formatting since 1994. Earlier due to slow CPUs sector interleaving indeed made sense for performance reasons.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Don’t need low level anything. Formatting a broken drive won’t fix it

 

[Krotow]

Don’t need low level anything. Formatting a broken drive won’t fix it

It is still question are drive is really broken or drive is not recognized due to USB shenanigans.

For example I have two external USB drives with 2.5" HDD inside who reliably works only via USB 3.0. In USB 2.0 sockets they often can't initialize properly because start current slightly exceed allowed current per single USB 2.0 port.