Hard drive formatting for 3 days now......

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ramjet

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#154663 3-Nov-2014 20:59

A few years ago I bought a WD 1TB external hard drive which broke down after the warranty expired. It had developed bad sectors but part of the drive seemed accessible. I remove the drive from the enclosure but mothballed it until recently when I bought a USB hard drive docking station and am now trying to revive it.

In the Disk Management window the drive shows as 931.5 GB and 'Healthy(Logical Drive). I started the Windows format program last Friday evening and it is still going 3 days later. I didn't choose the Quick Format option as I wanted to 'properly' format it. Strangely, the format program has disappeared but I'm sure the drive is still being formatted as the LED on the dock is flashing red & blue.

Does anyone know how I might get the formatting program to reappear as it's frustrating not being able to see the progress bar? Right-clicking the drive in Explorer and selecting Format gives an error message 'You do not have sufficient rights to perform this operation'.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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#1168010 3-Nov-2014 21:03

Reboot, try again?

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#1168017 3-Nov-2014 21:10

All hard drives fail eventually.
Yours has failed.
1TB HDDs are cheap as chips.
Get a new one.

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timmmay

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#1168019 3-Nov-2014 21:11

Yep, it's stuffed, chuck it.

ckc

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#1168034 3-Nov-2014 21:57

Before you throw it out, see if you can get some information out of it with Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. Probably ultimately pointless but at least you might feel a little less bad about chucking it.

kiwigeek1

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#1168062 3-Nov-2014 22:24

throw it had plenty of WD and seagate go like that.. normally bad sectors.. other thing used to get is clunk of death.. where it over seeks.

this is why you always have 2 and copy the same file on each... and hope only on drive fails.
simple manual raid :)

if bought from ascent.co nz. you have 3 year warranty normally so can get it replaced free of charge and
they might refund postage if ask.

for software I use.. and is the best for hard drives is

HDDREG2011.iso

Hard Drive regenerator 2011

it will show slow or damaged sectors.. slow ones mean its taking longer to read them or seek to them dont mean they bad though.

the software will read sectors and rewrite data back to sector rebuilding the magnetic-ness of it :)

but my experience the drive is dying and will die before long when format fails.

normally.. TB drives they have spare sectors on them they use for relocating bad sectors via the firmware.. once they are all used up .. you run into problems

check the smart info.. but normally cant via USB.. have to put the drive on a SATA connection to read smart status

but that would void warranty of WD external usb drive.

Batman

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#1168092 3-Nov-2014 23:29

Always quick format.

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ramjet

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#1168208 4-Nov-2014 08:52

At last, this morning it stopped whatever it was doing. It certainly wasn't formatting the drive as it's just the same as it was before.

So I'll take the advice given above and it's now a paperweight.

Thanks to everyone who replied. Much appreciated.

Cheers.

gundar

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#1168258 4-Nov-2014 09:38

I'm busy working through a pile of hard drives at the moment that have some questionable behaviour; slow or files suddenly falling apart for no reason etc. I use an external USB dock to check SMART detail which shows many relocations or a high error count in all of them, so I guess this is what you would see if you got this far.

I use PortableApps CrystalDiskInfo to check the stats. Note, this applet launches from Portable Apps, so you need this first but neither are installable - they are both, as the name suggests, exe only apps with no Windows footprint.

The disks I am checking have had high utilisation and my research has shown that in some cases, block errors can be reported to SMART that are in fact time-outs as a result of high use, so it may be that the disks are useful, just not in the same environment.

Some of these disks are still under warranty, but in the past, I have sent disks to WD to be told that if they are found to have been used outside of their intended design, then the warranty can be denied and possibly costs claimed. In this case, consumer grade hardware has knowingly been used in a testing environment and when we started this project, we knew the disks would only last a year or less.

I don't throw whole disks out, especially disks that may contain proprietary information. I use a script in CygWin to overwrite the entire disk with 1GB files of random characters and a 3TB disk takes about 3 days to completely cover over USB2. The end result is a disk with thousands of files of random characters. I then give the disks to my kids to pull apart and look for the magnets they enjoy playing with, before binning them (the disks, not the kids). Good luck recovering anything from those jam finger-printed platters of random characters, from various models of disk, in various conditions :-)

TL;DR: If your computer shop does not want to entertain a warranty, you can check the serial number here: http://support.wdc.com/warranty/ (for WD disks). In the past, WD have replaced disks I have sent at my expense to Singapore or Malaysia (usually about $25 airmail). The replacements have been model identical but with 6mo warranties.

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#1168326 4-Nov-2014 11:20

gundar:... I don't throw whole disks out, especially disks that may contain proprietary information. I use a script in CygWin to overwrite the entire disk with 1GB files of random characters and a 3TB disk takes about 3 days to completely cover over USB2.

The CIA use a more direct approach - they put a bullet through their old hard drives.

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ckc

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#1168907 4-Nov-2014 22:19

Data recovery is really hard when your hard drive has to be swept up with a dustpan and brush before you can throw it away.

ubergeeknz

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#1168932 4-Nov-2014 22:55

Smashing it with a hammer is generally considered "adequate" for corporate type data.

However melting it down or grinding it to dust is the only way to be absolutely sure.

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#1168933 4-Nov-2014 22:57

gundar: I don't throw whole disks out, especially disks that may contain proprietary information. I use a script in CygWin to overwrite the entire disk with 1GB files of random characters and a 3TB disk takes about 3 days to completely cover over USB2. The end result is a disk with thousands of files of random characters. I then give the disks to my kids to pull apart and look for the magnets they enjoy playing with, before binning them (the disks, not the kids). Good luck recovering anything from those jam finger-printed platters of random characters, from various models of disk, in various conditions :-)

Actually you need to write more than once - multiple passes - to completely write over the information in a magnetic storage unit.

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kiwigeek1

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#1168935 4-Nov-2014 23:03

actually I saw a docu about data privacy and I think they did a experiment on gadget show UK
not sure on episode .. but prob can find it online.

they blew up it with tnt.

flame thrower and hit it with hammers.ran over it. and the expert could still retrieve personal data from it

and photos :)

ubergeeknz

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#1168952 4-Nov-2014 23:43

Wayyy OT now but still

https://securityledger.com/2012/12/the-good-news-for-newtown-investigators-destroying-hard-drives-is-harder-than-you-think/

So yeah, smashing it (really well, like make sure you get all the platters) with a hammer is going to make things hard. But to be really safe, you need to remove the magnetic media off the platters.

kiwigeek1

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#1168958 4-Nov-2014 23:51

remember also they reclaimed all the data of that space shuttle seagate drive after explosion

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