Hi, I've recently bought a 2TB Samsung Spinpoint HDD from Scan for my creaking computer for some temporary storage before I start a new build and am having problems formatting the drive. The HDD is recognised at startup and shows on My Computer as local disk with no capacity marked. I've gone on to Adminstrative Tools, computer management, disk management and initialised the drive. When I tried quick format it came up with 'The Format did not complete successfully'. So, I then tried doing a long format (took 14 hours to work through) for it only to come up with the same error again at 99%. I'm stuck for ideas, any thoughts or clues? (P.S. Using Vista )
Any help would be appreciated. I'm worried that I've got a duff drive or if I'm just missing something rather basic.
Is this hard drive internal? how is it connected? Also, in your bios, check if there are any options for the drive, there may be a choice between "IDE" mode and "AHCI" mode, change that and see if that makes any difference. Are you able to connect it to another computer to try?
Did you initialize it as a new gpt volume? I have had much better luck using gpt over mbr on large volumes. While windows is supposed to support mbr upto 2tb, it doesn't seem to like anything over 1tb in my experience. I also highly recommend having ahci mode if its available. If you still have trouble you might try gparted. If you can't get it partitioned and formatted in gparted, the disk may be faulty.
It's it an internal SATA 3gb/s drive on the 2nd SATA slot. The motherboard is a Asus P5N-E SLI. I initialised the HDD though the Comp Management system and it's showing as (D 1863.01 GB RAW Healthy (Active, Primary Partition). Unfortunately I don't have another computer to try it with (currently saving for a new build in the near future) I've ordered another sata cable to test it (they're cheap enough anyway). If it doesn't work then I'll probably go with the RMA with Scan. Thanks for your replies so far
Still worth looking in your bios settings to see if changing the drive mode will let it complete the format. But yes it may be a faulty drive... Also try swapping the sata cable with the one on your boot drive. If it now fails to boot you will know its the sata cable!
Ok, a quick update from tinkering, I partitioned the drive a little, it let me set up a 800gb partition but is still being reluctant with the rest of drive. It's all a little odd really, I'm inclined to blame Vista for all of life's problems at this point.
Thats typical behavior for mbr. If you use gpt instead you should be able to address the entire thing. Kill the partion so the disk is back to raw. In disk management view select disk list. Once in disk list right click and choose convert to gpt disk, then format it.
Im sure a 1tb drive can be used with mbr as a single partition? any else using one? But yes if its not going to be a boot drive, then give gpt a go as suggested.
i'm currently using a western digital 2tb black drive as a boot drive, not partitioned with no issue, but then i'm on win7
