Win7 Pro: Cannot format HGST 4 TB storage drive

[dg27]

My system is a Dell Studio XPS 9100, Win 7 Pro 64-bit, SP1, Intel Core i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80 GHz, 24 GB RAM. Boot drive is a Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB. This is a recent installation.

I used an HGST 4 TB drive partitioned GPT in this system before replacing the boot drive.

I tried to install a new HGST Deskstar 4 TB drive and formatting failed.

I had no problems when installing the first drive in this system last year. It was essentially initialize, format, and I was good to go. (That drive eventually died and was replaced by this drive.)

After physically installing the replacement drive:

1) Win7 reported that the HGST drivers were successfully installed.

2) Disk Management reported that the drive need to be initialized before formatting and I did, using GPT.

3) After that it was all downhill. Formatting failed in both Acronis and Win 7 disk management. With Acronis I received an error message to restart, but after that the drive wasn’t even recognized in Disk Management as initialized.

4) System hung on the Windows screen on boot; would not even boot up till I disconnected the drive. Once I disconnected the drive there were no booting issues.

I don't remember having to make any BIOS changes when I installed the first 4 TB drive.

The failed format triggered an error message in the Event Viewer:

Unexpected failure. Error code: D@01010004

I'm wondering whether there's a conflict of some sort or whether it's just a dead drive.

dg

 

[Szyrs]

Just out of curiousity, why did you need to format the drive a second time? It's possible that it's a hardware error but I believe that that error code is a pagefile error, which would indicate a bad cluster.

Since this is not your OS drive, try connecting the drive externally ( or hot plugging it, if your motherboard supports it) and running chkdisk on the drive.

 

[dg27]

Sorry I wasn't clear: This is a new drive that replaced the original 4 TB drive I had in this system:

"I tried to install a new HGST Deskstar 4 TB drive and formatting failed....I had no problems when installing the first drive in this system last year. It was essentially initialize, format, and I was good to go. (That drive eventually died and was replaced by this drive.)"

Can you clarify this?

>>or hot plugging it, if your motherboard supports it)

I was considering trying it with a dock (which I would have to get)...

Thanks.

dg

 

[Szyrs]

I'm sorry, I misread your second list item and thought that you had both initialised and formatted the drive in that step. I was wondering if something had then happend to make to format the drive again but obviously not, I'd just misunderstood what you'd said. See how you go with hooking it up during OS. My suspicion is that it's not a hardware issue...

 

[dg27]

>>See how you go with hooking it up during OS

Do you mean connecting the SATA cable when the system is already up and running? Is this safe (no shock hazard)?

>>My suspicion is that it's not a hardware issue...

Do you mean not a hardware issue with my system? Or not a hardware issue with this drive?

 

[Szyrs]

Yes, connecting or disconnecting the drive while the computer is turned on is known as hot swapping. It's not something that is commonly done in the home and something that most people tend to avoid as good practice, but it is certainly possible. Many modern motherboards have an option in BIOS that will allow it - which is why you should definitely consult your motherboard manual before you even consider braving it. Definitely don't fumble about shorting connectors and do not do it with your SSD.

What I mean is that it sounds more like you have a bad cluster or something, rather than physical damage or a faulty disk. Like I said though, just a guess.

 

[dg27]

Yes, connecting or disconnecting the drive while the computer is turned on is known as hot swapping. It's not something that is commonly done in the home and something that most people tend to avoid as good practice, but it is certainly possible.

I think I'll try using a dock instead.

What I mean is that it sounds more like you have a bad cluster or something, rather than physical damage or a faulty disk. Like I said though, just a guess.

I provided a complete description of the problem to HGST and they responded by emailing me a UPS shipping label to return the drive.

Sooo...it'll be a week or so before I try again with the replacement.

I'm really just trying to determine whether there's some BIOS (or other) setting I am unaware of that needs to be changed to use a 4 TB data drive.

Thanks.

dg

 

[Szyrs]

You mean a drive over 2.19TB? That's only if you want to use it for an OS drive, because large drives require GPT. Since you are using an SSD for your OS drive, it won't effect you.

Since you have RMA'd your HDD already, what's the harm in hot swapping it? You'd do pretty well to fry the pcb and as I say, it's quite likely that your motherboard supports it. It's just a SATA plug but ok, if you don't want to, then don't. I realise that I sound like some troll trying to get you to ruin your PC now but it's honestly not a cowboy move. If you already have the RMA # then what have you got to lose?

As a side note though, HGST is a subsidory of Western Digital, it's a rebrand after WD bought Hitachi. I've not had a Hitachi drive since IDE was cool but I know that if you RMA a drive with Western Digital they only mail you a reconditioned drive - not a new one! i'd be very surprised if HGST have a different policy...

 

[Szyrs]

If your drive was larger than your filesystem allowed, you'd only be able to format it to the maximum allowed inder your filesystem. For example a FAT32 partition won't go above 32GB in windows. Since you have already said that you initialised the disk as GPT, that is not the problem. The BIOS utilities you speak of ( I think asus' is called Disk Unlocker but they all have similar names) are for using GPT disks as boot drives...

 

[dg27]

You mean a drive over 2.19TB? That's only if you want to use it for an OS drive, because large drives require GPT. Since you are using an SSD for your OS drive, it won't effect you.

My understanding is that whether it's a boot or a data drive, GPT is must so that Windows will recognize over 2.19 TB, right? I'm certain I partitioned the first one I had as a data drive using GPT. Is that not a requirement?

Since you have RMA'd your HDD already, what's the harm in hot swapping it?

It's already on the way back.

As a side note though, HGST is a subsidiary of Western Digital, it's a rebrand after WD bought Hitachi....

Well aware... yes, like WD they send refurbished drives.

If your drive was larger than your filesystem allowed, you'd only be able to format it to the maximum allowed under your filesystem. For example a FAT32 partition won't go above 32GB in windows. Since you have already said that you initialised the disk as GPT, that is not the problem. The BIOS utilities you speak of are for using GPT disks as boot drives...

I'm shooting in the dark here because I was shocked it didn't format correctly. I may buy a dock to format the replacement.

 

[Szyrs]

You're more or less right, but the wrong way around. GPT is the partition table (default is MBR). Even if you initialise the disk as MBR you'll be able to use the drive in windows, it just won't allow you to use more than 2.19TB. When you open it in disk management there will be a portion of your actual drive that will remain in a black frame, that you will not be able to format.

Windows will recognise and access GPT disks once it's running but bootloader or whatever only recognises MBR - this is the problem that these BIOS utilities get around. I have never taken the time to understand it better than that but I'm certain that it's only required for boot drives, under windows. If at any point under windows you have used a drive that is larger than 2.19TB and had full access to the entire capacity of the disk, it's been under GPT. It's the only way possible. You cannot use an MBR partition table and then create several disk partitions of any format that amout to a total disk usage of 2.2TB or more. That is because of the partition table used. MBR allows 32bit logical addresses while GPT uses 64bit. Hard drives have 512byte sectors, so 32bit = 2.19 TerraBytes (MBR); 64bit = 9.4 ZettaBytes (GPT)

When you format a partition,you're formating it to use a filesystem. These also have their limitations but they have more under windows than unix based systems, including OSX. For example FAT16 has a maximum volume size of 2GB under windows but up to 4GB in some other OS', FAT32 has a max volume size of 32GB under windows but up to 2TB in some other OS' - also different operating systems won't recognise some file systems... Most USB thumb drives come formatted as exFAT, which is why you can plug them into a mac or pc...

You'll be using GPT as your partition table and most commonly NTFS as your file system - that is the most common way and good for any hard drive up to 16TB.

 

[dg27]

Now I'm really confused.

Before I installed the first 4 TB drive, all my drives were MBR. I partitioned the 4 TB GPT and saw all 4 TB with no conflicts.

>>You'll be using GPT as your partition table and most commonly NTFS as your file system - that is the most common way and good for any hard drive up to 16TB.

Does this mean I have to make changes to my boot drive and my other data drive??? I sure hope not.

I thought all I had to do was partition this drive GPT (as I did the last time) and I'd be good to go.

 

[Szyrs]

Hahaha sorry, I had a feeling I was saying too much then, it's difficult to know what to water down and what to skip out.

I'm getting caught up trying to explain things that you probably aren't intersted in understanding. You will not need to adjust your existing computer at all - your OS drive is already MBR. Even if you format your C: you will not be effecting that. You would have to go to a great deal of effort to change your MBR disk to a GPT disk.

When you get your new HDD you will be prompted to initialize the disk. You must initialise it as a GPT disk. That is not what partitioning a drive is, partitioning come later down the track. What it is doing, (basically) is dictating how much space you can use on that disk. Once you have selected your partition table, you may then partition the disk into one or more partitions, and assign each one with a file system. The recommended filesystem for you to use in windows, on a disk of such large capacity, is NTFS. This will enable you to use your disk but will have no effect on any other drive in your PC. You should not have to tinker with any other drives, nor with and BIOS settings, to use your new hard drive. Nor, for that matter, should you need to use Acronis, or Gparted or any other 3rd party software to initialise or format your disk. You should be able to simple plug it in and follow the prompts that windows gives you.

 

[Szyrs]

The above applies just the same, regardless of whether you connect your HDD to your computer via USB, SATA or eSATA.

 

[dg27]

Hahaha sorry, I had a feeling I was saying too much then, it's difficult to know what to water down and what to skip out.

No problem!

When you get your new HDD you will be prompted to initialize the disk. You must initialise it as a GPT disk. That is not what partitioning a drive is, partitioning come later down the track. What it is doing, (basically) is dictating how much space you can use on that disk.

Got it. I did initialize GPT...

Once you have selected your partition table, you may then partition the disk into one or more partitions, and assign each one with a file system. The recommended filesystem for you to use in windows, on a disk of such large capacity, is NTFS.

That's what I did, NTFS as one honking 4 TB drive. It actually calculated to 3725.90 GB.

Nor, for that matter, should you need to use Acronis... You should be able to simple plug it in and follow the prompts that windows gives you.

Maybe that's where things screwed up. My go-to tool has always been Acronis, though I do not remember if I used it with the the first HGST 4 TB I had, exactly a year ago. With this one, Acronis hung and hung and hung then said to shut down and things went downhill from there.

The above applies just the same, regardless of whether you connect your HDD to your computer via USB, SATA or eSATA.

I was considering buying a dock just because of all the problems I had with this one, but none of seem too reliable with drives over 2 TB. And I do not want this as an external drive.

Thanks for all your help. I will definitely post again when the "new" one arrives.

dg

 

[Szyrs]

I don't know about a "dock" as opposed to a hard drive caddy. They are possibly the same thing but I don't mean one of those letterbox looking things that you slot the end of a naked drive into, I mean the SATA to USB interface that you can rip out of any external HDD case. For a 3.5" drive you would need to use one with an external power supply, but I regularly use them with 3TB drives and don't have any issues. You can pick one up for about $10 but as a strange result of marketing, here in Perth, Australia, it's actually about $100 cheaper to go to an office supply shop or somewhere like K-mart and buy an external 4TB drive than it is to buy a naked 4TB drive anywhere else! As a best practice though, I recommend initialising your drive in the same place that you'll use it and I also agree, externalising your HDD is a great way to kill it...

The diffirence in capacity that you mentioned is the space taken up by the partition table - each block of memory has it's own unique address. In and MBR partition table that address is 32bits long, in GPT it's 64bits long - hence the maximum capacity of the MBR drive is so much less, even on a large drive. The capacity of the drive literally exceeds the ability of the partition table to assign unique addresses to the memory block, so it just stops at 2TB...

 

[dg27]

Thanks...I'll just install in the desktop and hope for the best, following your advice: "Plug and pray."

 

[dg27]

Received a 2nd replacement and had the same outcome.

(My system is a Dell Studio XPS 9100 running Win 7 Pro 64-bit, SP1. Intel Core i7, CPU 930 @ 2.80 GHz, 24 GB RAM. Boot drive is a Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB.)

The drive will not format in my system: Period.

Upon physically installing the drive, Windows recognized the drive and indicated that it needed to be initialized.

After initializing as GPT, I selected Quick Format as a simple new volume. Win 7 started formatting and formatting hung for 15 minutes then crashed, resulting in a BSOD. When I have formatted other drives it usually takes a couple of minutes at most.

The system will not boot when that drive is connected. It freezes at the Windows screen.

As soon as the drive is disconnected, the system boots in under 10 seconds.

The previous HGST drive was fine: All of the problems started when I reinstalled Win 7 on a new SSD.

I'm at my wit's end as to what is causing this:A conflict of some sort?

BTW: I tried hot-swapping and the system didn't recognize it as there at all.

Contacted HGST support.

 

[sackbut]

The "best solution" above seems more like "NO solution" from what I can tell. It describes what SHOULD happen. dg27 seems to have never gotten the drive to work as of the last post. I'm having a similar problem with an HGST 4TB drive and Windows 7. http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2478799/hgst-4tb-drive-partition-data-drive-windows-bit.html

 

[dg27]

The "best solution" above seems more like "NO solution" from what I can tell. It describes what SHOULD happen. dg27 seems to have never gotten the drive to work as of the last post. I'm having a similar problem with an HGST 4TB drive and Windows 7. http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2478799/hgst-4tb-drive-partition-data-drive-windows-bit.html

I'm gearing up to reconfigure my storage drives and replace my old and small backup drives [all data is on non-OS drives and I do redundant backups for everything]. I've been using the replacement HGST 4 TB in an external case as a data [not backup] drive and am considering reformatting this an external backup drive.

I have had an open HDD bay/SATA connection in my desktop since this whole mess started and I'd really like to put it to good use with a 4TB WD CB HDD [on sale right now at a very good price].

Given the mysterious issues I had previously [the subject of this thread], I was wondering whether getting the naked drive, installing it in an external case temporarily, and creating two 2 TB partitions might avoid the issues. Once it was partitioned and formatted I'd take it out of the case and install in the machine.

Does this seem like a logical workaround?

 

[aallegre]

Did you ever get this to work? I am experiencing exactly the same issue. Down to the letter. Except I'm using the WD 4TB Black drive.

I've seen some threads that propose updating Intel drivers, etc... but I suspect none of that should be necessary. I don't believe it is the drive, as you are having the same problem with both.

 

[dg27]

Did you ever get this to work? I am experiencing exactly the same issue. Down to the letter. Except I'm using the WD 4TB Black drive.

I've seen some threads that propose updating Intel drivers, etc... but I suspect none of that should be necessary. I don't believe it is the drive, as you are having the same problem with both.

No. I'm glad you posted because I was going to try a WD 4 TB drive. The weirdest thing is that my 1st HGST (which died) worked fine in the same system when I had an HDD (WD CB) as the boot drive. After I did a clean install on a Samsung 840 Pro SSD I could never get a 4 TB HDD to work again as a storage drive. I've read the same things about the Intel drivers, but whenever I go to the Intel site it always confirms that all of my drivers are up to date. I've resorted to using my (2nd) HGST 4 TB in an enclosure. The tricky part about that is that I must make sure the enclosure is switched off when I boot up. Otherwise I get a black screen and an error message about an invalid partition. If I boot up and then turn the enclosure on, everything works fine.

I'm still wondering whether initializing then formatting as two 2 TB partitions in an enclosure and then moving to the inside of the machine might work. Haven't tried that yet.

 

[aallegre]

[/quotemsg]
No. I'm glad you posted because I was going to try a WD 4 TB drive. The weirdest thing is that my 1st HGST (which died) worked fine in the same system when I had an HDD (WD CB) as the boot drive. After I did a clean install on a Samsung 840 Pro SSD I could never get a 4 TB HDD to work again as a storage drive. I've read the same things about the Intel drivers, but whenever I go to the Intel site it always confirms that all of my drivers are up to date. I've resorted to using my (2nd) HGST 4 TB in an enclosure. The tricky part about that is that I must make sure the enclosure is switched off when I boot up. Otherwise I get a black screen and an error message about an invalid partition. If I boot up and then turn the enclosure on, everything works fine.

I'm still wondering whether initializing then formatting as two 2 TB partitions in an enclosure and then moving to the inside of the machine might work. Haven't tried that yet.
[/quotemsg]

Oh man. That's discouraging. I had hoped that booting from the SSD would help since the existing 2TB HDD (Seagate Barracuda, replacement for one that died 1 year ago, dying after 1 year of use and the reason I even got a new HDD) is slow to boot anyway, and perhaps is the problem.

But I do think this is an OS problem, or something in the boot sequence, not a problem with the drives--especially as you were able to successfully install a 4TB drive previously.

I'm glad YOU posted because the HGST Desktar was my top choice, but I went with the WD Black on a recommendation. But again, I don't think it's the drives, I think it's an issue in the OS. I just can't believe how many threads are out there, identical to this, with no solution.

As my existing HDD is dying, I'm hoping not to have to fart around with ordering more parts/adapters/enclosures (though I am glad to hear that SOMETHING works!).

Maybe I missed it in your original thread, but did you do a clean install of windows on your SSD when you installed it as your boot drive?

 

[dg27]

Maybe I missed it in your original thread, but did you do a clean install of windows on your SSD when you installed it as your boot drive?

Yes--I did a clean install. I am very anal when it comes to doing this, which is why I was sure from the get-go that I had not missed any drivers.

I agree: I do not think this is drive problem, but an OS issue.

 

[aallegre]

Maybe I missed it in your original thread, but did you do a clean install of windows on your SSD when you installed it as your boot drive?

Yes--I did a clean install. I am very anal when it comes to doing this, which is why I was sure from the get-go that I had not missed any drivers.

I agree: I do not think this is drive problem, but an OS issue.

So...

I just wanted to check back and say that the following worked for me. Much of this will be old hat for you, but maybe something will be useful. I think I stated before, but I did have to uninstall Acronis True Image Home 2012 to even begin this process.

1) While my old HDD was still the OS drive, and when I was having these problems, I downloaded and installed WD's specific flavor of Acronis: http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en

2) Installed Acronis True Image WD Edition to the old HDD and used that software to format the new HDD. It claimed that it worked, but the existing HDD could not see the new HDD anyway, stated it was corrupt, etc. However, according to Acronis, the drive was successfully formatted, labeled, and assigned a drive letter.

3) I shut down the machine, unplugged all drives, drained the power from the computer by holding down the power button while all drives and peripherals were disconnected

4) I plugged in the new SSD (which as yet, had only been added and set up via the old HDD, nothing installed). Only SSD and optical drive connected at this point. HDDs disconnected.

5) I put my Windows 7 DVD in the optical drive

6) Set boot options to boot to the optical drive first (I have seen in some instances where this works to resolve the slow boot process for those who already have successfully formatted HDDs working in concert with SSDs--counter intuitive, but just mentioning) to perform the Windows install.

7) Installed Windows on the SSD, performed the necessary updates. AHCI is the default selection in my startup options for SSD and that is how I left it.

8) Shut down the machine, plugged in the old HDD just to make sure that my SSD could properly see a known working drive. It could. Start time was lightning fast.

9) Shut down the machine, connected the new HDD

10) Started up, the SSD could see the new drive, labeled and formatted as I had left it with the Acronis software. Windows could not see it from the old HDD, no matter what, but the SSD could see and access it fine, so the format did work, even though for some reason the old install of Windows could not see it.

I can check the order of my SATA ports, in case that made a difference (it seemed to), but primarily because I have the optical drive and the SSD sharing one of the dual ports, and the two HDDs sharing the other dual port. I think I had ODD at 0, SSD at 1, HDD 1 at 3 and HDD 2 at 4.

I may have received an error on the first format in Acronis (I can't remember exactly) but if I did, I just ran the format again.

Your post doesn't say which Acronis software you used, but it seems that WD is aware enough of this issue that the have their own proprietary solution. However, I don't see that HGST offers anything similar. As HGST operates independently under WD, I wouldn't expect them to have identical problems or solutions.

So.... just in case you decide to try the WD black drive... it does work, as long as you use the properietary Acronis software.