Unable to format partition

[liquidgrey]

Hi all,
I'm having some trouble with a partition on my Seagate Barracuda ST31500341AS 1.5 TB drive on my Windows XP machine. I just use this partition as storage, and when I went to back up some stuff onto it I noticed it had ran out of space. I added up all the folders and only came to 200 gig when there should have been over 400 gig available. Since it was just extra storage I moved the data onto my external drive, and figured I would just reformat the drive and then move it back.

Every time I try, the E: drive seems to be reformatting, but at the very end I get an error that says the format was unable to complete. I tried from disk management because I read that helps but again it seemed to be working only to error at the end. I found some advice to just delete the partition and then recreate it. I try that and it can be deleted, but when I recreate it I still can't format it. Recently I tried Seagate disc wizard/drive cleanser to wipe the partition, but it just sits and says "calculating time remaining" but doesn't do anything. The drive worked fine before other than the mystery space being taken up, so I can't figure out what the problem is or how to fix it. I have also dried chkdsk /r on the drive but got an error that says it can't work because it is in RAW format now.

Any ideas/tools I can use?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, liquidgrey!

I'd suggest you to use your HDD manufacturer's diagnostics tool to test the drive's health and check up on the SMART status. If you have another computer in sight, you can perform the tests there once you connect the drive internally or externally (via SATA-to-USB cable or a Docking station). If you this is not an option, you can simply search for the DOS version of the tool which will allow you to test the drive without booting into any OS. One of the features of the tool should be WRITE ZEROS which will completely erase all data on the drive to the point of no return.
However, since the drive is in RAW format, it means that the partitions got corrupted/damaged. That's why I'd strongly recommend testing the drive's health and checking the SMART status first.

Keep me posted! Hope this helps!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Nikolay Savov]

Hi all,
I'm having some trouble with a partition on my Seagate Barracuda ST31500341AS 1.5 TB drive on my Windows XP machine. I just use this partition as storage, and when I went to back up some stuff onto it I noticed it had ran out of space. I added up all the folders and only came to 200 gig when there should have been over 400 gig available. Since it was just extra storage I moved the data onto my external drive, and figured I would just reformat the drive and then move it back.

Every time I try, the E: drive seems to be reformatting, but at the very end I get an error that says the format was unable to complete. I tried from disk management because I read that helps but again it seemed to be working only to error at the end. I found some advice to just delete the partition and then recreate it. I try that and it can be deleted, but when I recreate it I still can't format it. Recently I tried Seagate disc wizard/drive cleanser to wipe the partition, but it just sits and says "calculating time remaining" but doesn't do anything. The drive worked fine before other than the mystery space being taken up, so I can't figure out what the problem is or how to fix it. I have also dried chkdsk /r on the drive but got an error that says it can't work because it is in RAW format now.

Any ideas/tools I can use?

Hi
In short you HDD is R.I.P. or maybe verry close to that point.

Try to test it with SeaTools for Windows then for DOS and if you see any error reported then forget this HDD

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

Mine Barracuda 1,5TB went R.I.P. few monts ago ....... the last 2 months i was still using it regarding SMART errors but at the final point went death at all ......

 

[liquidgrey]

Welcome to the community, liquidgrey!

I'd suggest you to use your HDD manufacturer's diagnostics tool to test the drive's health and check up on the SMART status. If you have another computer in sight, you can perform the tests there once you connect the drive internally or externally (via SATA-to-USB cable or a Docking station). If you this is not an option, you can simply search for the DOS version of the tool which will allow you to test the drive without booting into any OS. One of the features of the tool should be WRITE ZEROS which will completely erase all data on the drive to the point of no return.
However, since the drive is in RAW format, it means that the partitions got corrupted/damaged. That's why I'd strongly recommend testing the drive's health and checking the SMART status first.

Keep me posted! Hope this helps!
SuperSoph_WD

Thanks for your response and welcome SuperSoph. I forgot to mention that I did try to run SeaTools, but now that I try running it again I notice that only my Maxtor HD is on there and not my Seagate. So I can't choose it to test. The drive does come up in Seagate Drive Detect, but it is in red which indicates that there is new firmware available for the drive. Do you think this could have something to do with it? I tried to update the firmware earlier as well but it failed to initialize. The Seagate DiscWizard DriveCleanser said it would write 0s to the disk but freezes when I try to start. Here is image of the disk management if that helps

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Thanks for your response and welcome SuperSoph. I forgot to mention that I did try to run SeaTools, but now that I try running it again I notice that only my Maxtor HD is on there and not my Seagate. So I can't choose it to test. The drive does come up in Seagate Drive Detect, but it is in red which indicates that there is new firmware available for the drive. Do you think this could have something to do with it? I tried to update the firmware earlier as well but it failed to initialize. The Seagate DiscWizard DriveCleanser said it would write 0s to the disk but freezes when I try to start. Here is image of the disk management if that helps

It seems like the HDD has failed due to severe damage. Since even the firmware update fails, I don't think there's much more we can do about it. You can still try accessing and testing it on another computer or using a docking station (externally) as a last resort.
However, you should still check in with your manufacturer's tech support and see if the drive is covered by the warranty. If it is, you should be able to send an RMA request and be provided with a replacement product.
I just hope that you've managed to back up the data from the failed HDD though.

Best of luck! Sorry I couldn't be more helpful!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[liquidgrey]

It seems like the HDD has failed due to severe damage. Since even the firmware update fails, I don't think there's much more we can do about it. You can still try accessing and testing it on another computer or using a docking station (externally) as a last resort.
However, you should still check in with your manufacturer's tech support and see if the drive is covered by the warranty. If it is, you should be able to send an RMA request and be provided with a replacement product.
I just hope that you've managed to back up the data from the failed HDD though.

Best of luck! Sorry I couldn't be more helpful!
SuperSoph_WD[/quotemsg]

Wow I didn't imagine it could be so severe. The other partitions are working ok. One of them has the operating system and another one the programs. I've backed everything up off the drive before I first tried formatting, so no big data loss thankfully. Weird too windows disk manager can see the drive, and Seagate Drive Detect can see it too, but Seatools cannot 🙁

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Wow I didn't imagine it could be so severe. The other partitions are working ok. One of them has the operating system and another one the programs. I've backed everything up off the drive before I first tried formatting, so no big data loss thankfully. Weird too windows disk manager can see the drive, and Seagate Drive Detect can see it too, but Seatools cannot 🙁

Wait! I'm sorry, I just saw the screenshot. According to which the drive should be running flawlessly. The file system is NTFS, not RAW so it should get detected by all tools. The status is healthy as well. Can you test it with some other diagnostics tool to check the SMART status. Here's a thread with some third-party tool suggestions you can use: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

It would help a lot, if you could post a screenshot of the SMART data.
I'm sorry for the confusion!

Keep me posted!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Hawkeye22]

You might want to try a chkdsk also. At an administrative command prompt type:

chkdsk e: /f

assuming E is the partition you want checked.

 

[liquidgrey]

Wait! I'm sorry, I just saw the screenshot. According to which the drive should be running flawlessly. The file system is NTFS, not RAW so it should get detected by all tools. The status is healthy as well. Can you test it with some other diagnostics tool to check the SMART status. Here's a thread with some third-party tool suggestions you can use: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

It would help a lot, if you could post a screenshot of the SMART data.
I'm sorry for the confusion!

Keep me posted!
SuperSoph_WD

Thanks for the suggestion. From following the link I downloaded HD Tune. HD tune is thankfully able to see the drive and here's what comes up in the health tab, which I think is the SMART status?



I'm also running an error scan with HD Tune and so far all the sectors are coming back green. It's taking a long time but it's about 2/3rd of the way through now. Right now I have the problem partition deleted and unallocated and just need to find a way to zero it/reformat if possible?

 

[liquidgrey]

You might want to try a chkdsk also. At an administrative command prompt type:

chkdsk e: /f

assuming E is the partition you want checked.

Thanks Hawkeye. I think I did try this before except I tried chkdsk e: /r
It gave an error like chkdsk could not be used because the drive was in the RAW format. I'm running an HD tune error scan now but when it's done I'll try it again. Right now I have the partition deleted an unallocated, so hoping to find a way to fix the errors and format it so I can use the partition again. Any ideas much appreciated

 

[liquidgrey]

Hi
In short you HDD is R.I.P. or maybe verry close to that point.

Try to test it with SeaTools for Windows then for DOS and if you see any error reported then forget this HDD

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

Mine Barracuda 1,5TB went R.I.P. few monts ago ....... the last 2 months i was still using it regarding SMART errors but at the final point went death at all ......
[/quotemsg]

I hope it is not to that point! It doesn't seem like it could be because the operating system and programs are on the same drive and working ok. For some reason seatools doesn't see the drive at all though. I downloaded another program - HD Tune to check the SMART status and this is what it shows which means nothing to me other than I read the yellow means something like there is almost a problem?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hi again, liquidgrey!

It seems like you've got only 3 bad sectors, which is not that bad. However, I'm concerned that the utility does not recognize so many of the SMART attributes (listing them as unknown attributes), so I'd recommend trying a different tool again and benchmark the results. The yellow marks usually mean 'caution', so we might need to worry about that as well.
Either way, back up the data from the HDD somewhere else ASAP! (external HDDs, cloud storage, etc.)
Another thing that comes to mind is using the DOS version of your drive manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test the drive without booting into Windows. You should be able to find it on their website with some sort of instructions on how to actually perform the test.

Keep us posted!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[liquidgrey]

Hi again, liquidgrey!

It seems like you've got only 3 bad sectors, which is not that bad. However, I'm concerned that the utility does not recognize so many of the SMART attributes (listing them as unknown attributes), so I'd recommend trying a different tool again and benchmark the results. The yellow marks usually mean 'caution', so we might need to worry about that as well.
Either way, back up the data from the HDD somewhere else ASAP! (external HDDs, cloud storage, etc.)
Another thing that comes to mind is using the DOS version of your drive manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test the drive without booting into Windows. You should be able to find it on their website with some sort of instructions on how to actually perform the test.

Keep us posted!
SuperSoph_WD

Hey Super_Soph,
I know this thread is kinda old now. I got sidetracked from trying to fix this but finally did run the DOS version of Seatools. The drive passed the short test and on the long test it said DST completed without error, Short DST passed, and Long test Passed. It also said SMART in enable but has not been tripped.

There's more advanced options in the tool like full erase, but it doesn't give me the option to just do that on a partition. And my os is on the other partition. What's your advice on how to proceed? Thanks again for your help and sorry for the late response.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey Super_Soph,
I know this thread is kinda old now. I got sidetracked from trying to fix this but finally did run the DOS version of Seatools. The drive passed the short test and on the long test it said DST completed without error, Short DST passed, and Long test Passed. It also said SMART in enable but has not been tripped.

There's more advanced options in the tool like full erase, but it doesn't give me the option to just do that on a partition. And my os is on the other partition. What's your advice on how to proceed? Thanks again for your help and sorry for the late response.

Hey there again, liquidgrey! It's been a while!

Well, passing one diagnostic test doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong with it. I guess you can try erasing and formatting the whole drive. The full erase (WRITE ZEROS) feature truly cannot format just one partition, you should do a full erase on the whole drive in attempt to lock those bad sectors. I think you should perform the full erase and simply re-install the OS after you've made sure that the drive passes the diagnostic tests again (after the formatting).
There's no way around using the low-level format feature without doing either the QUICK erase (which basically writes zeros to the first and last million sectors of the drive), or the recommended FULL erase (writes zeros to the entire drive).

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD