- May 9, 2020
- 3
- 0
- 10
Short version: my SSD cannot be formatted, deleted, or cleaned. Almost every tool I use reports no problems or appears to work, but the drive remains unaffected. What the heck could cause this? None of my searching has turned up anyone with a problem like this.
Long version: I've been running windows off a small cruddy SSD for 2 years now, with my files stored on an HDD. Today I upgraded my machine with a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM. The upgraded machine wouldn't boot from my SSD (Windows 10 - it would constantly restart from "Setting Up Devices"). NBD, I figured that might happen so I had everything backed up and went to format the SSD and reinstall windows from a USB install drive. I was given the option to delete and format the SSD from the windows installer. Clicking on either button gave me a little hourglass, and then returned to the installer as if it was successful, but the drive was unchanged/still full. I ran diskpart from the installer's cmd prompt and did Clean and Clean All. Both reported using disk list that the SSD was now empty (167GB of 167GB available), but when I went to install windows, it reported that the SSD still had 140GB in use (exactly the same as before). Eventually I gave up and installed a clean Windows 10 on my HDD and booted from that.
From there, I tried diskpart again, and also the Windows 10 Disk Management tool to Delete and Format the drive. As before, both tools appear to work, but if I close and open the Disk Management tool again, nothing actually changes. I can access (read, write, delete) the files on it just fine via Windows Explorer.
Here's a full list of what I've tried
Long version: I've been running windows off a small cruddy SSD for 2 years now, with my files stored on an HDD. Today I upgraded my machine with a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM. The upgraded machine wouldn't boot from my SSD (Windows 10 - it would constantly restart from "Setting Up Devices"). NBD, I figured that might happen so I had everything backed up and went to format the SSD and reinstall windows from a USB install drive. I was given the option to delete and format the SSD from the windows installer. Clicking on either button gave me a little hourglass, and then returned to the installer as if it was successful, but the drive was unchanged/still full. I ran diskpart from the installer's cmd prompt and did Clean and Clean All. Both reported using disk list that the SSD was now empty (167GB of 167GB available), but when I went to install windows, it reported that the SSD still had 140GB in use (exactly the same as before). Eventually I gave up and installed a clean Windows 10 on my HDD and booted from that.
From there, I tried diskpart again, and also the Windows 10 Disk Management tool to Delete and Format the drive. As before, both tools appear to work, but if I close and open the Disk Management tool again, nothing actually changes. I can access (read, write, delete) the files on it just fine via Windows Explorer.
Here's a full list of what I've tried
- Install windows on top of the old install (tries, reboots, no change)
- Delete/Format from Windows USB install media (hourglass, "completes", but no change or error)
- Clean/Clean All from diskpart on Windows USB install media (takes time, reports success, shows drive as being empty, but installer still sees 140GB in use)
- Replace SATA cable (no change)
- Switch SATA motherboard ports (no effect)
- Clean/Clean All from diskpart on running on Windows 10 on my other hard drive (takes time, reports success, shows drive as being empty, but windows explorer still sees 140GB)
- Delete/Format from Windows 10 Disk Management tool (hourglass, "completes", but no change or error)
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