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| Thread ID: 97265 | 2009-02-10 01:23:00 | Formating a 1TB external HDD on Windows XP | Renmoo (66) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 746380 | 2009-02-10 01:23:00 | Dear all, How long would it take to reformat such a massive capacity hard drive? I have just been given a half-working 1TB external hard drive to fix. The owner "just wanted it to start working". It does not have any data in it. Since this morning my laptop has been trying to format the drive, but I haven't got any idea whether it is progressing or not (the status does say "formatting" though). Under the properties of the hard drive, it says "RAW" with respect to the format type (rather than FAT32 or NTFS). Cheers :) |
Renmoo (66) | ||
| 746381 | 2009-02-10 01:27:00 | 5 minutes. Tick Quick format. | pctek (84) | ||
| 746382 | 2009-02-10 01:50:00 | What's the difference between that and proper formatting? Which one is preferred? Cheers :) |
Renmoo (66) | ||
| 746383 | 2009-02-10 01:54:00 | Took me 3 or so hours to foramt a SATA connected drive of that size with NTFS. Dunno about RAW. Maybe it is preferred for whatever software / drivers do the talking between the drive and Windows. |
Paul.Cov (425) | ||
| 746384 | 2009-02-10 01:55:00 | Proper formatting checks the entire disc surface for errors, and marks bad areas as unavailable. Quick format only does that to the FAT / directory areas, and sets their contents to null. If the drive is troublesome, better to suffer through a long format. |
Paul.Cov (425) | ||
| 746385 | 2009-02-10 01:56:00 | What's the difference between that and proper formatting? Which one is preferred? Cheers :) If you think the drive could be dodgey then do a full format. A quick format basically just wipes the boot sector & master file table while a full format actually wipes all files and checks the entire HDD for bad sectors at the same time. |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 746386 | 2009-02-10 02:16:00 | Thanks for the response guys. Does Windows actually display a progress bar of some sort during reformatting via Disk Management? Cheers :) |
Renmoo (66) | ||
| 746387 | 2009-02-10 02:23:00 | Yer where youre formatting it. But its not like a window, like you would see if it were formatted already |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 746388 | 2009-02-10 02:32:00 | Thanks for the response guys . Does Windows actually display a progress bar of some sort during reformatting via Disk Management? Have never seen one if it does, unfortunately . It just displays a window saying that it is formatting . IIRC my new 500GB took around an hour to do a full format . Not sure if it makes any difference or not but it is an internal drive, not external . |
FoxyMX (5) | ||
| 746389 | 2009-02-10 03:08:00 | If you think the drive could be dodgey then do a full format. A quick format basically just wipes the boot sector & master file table while a full format actually wipes all files and checks the entire HDD for bad sectors at the same time. Then how come NTFS can do a quick format at any time while FAT32 can only do so on an existing partition? |
pcuser42 (130) | ||
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