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4972
January 28th, 2004 14:00
Trouble reformatting external hard drive
I own a Dell Latitude C640 with an 18-gb internal hard drive.
As a backup and archive system, I purchased a Western Digital USB 2.0 hard drive (80gb). I was using it just fine (although at USB 1.1 speed) for several months. Then I either powered it down incorrectly or uninstalled it correctly from the docking station. In either case, as determined by exchanges with Western Digital support, I have lost what was on it, and Windows no longer could access the drive (although the Device Manager could tell it was there). I tried a few things to see if I could save my lost data, but then chose to bite the bullet and reformat. I have been told by various people these ways of formatting:
1. My Computer: Manager: Disk Management: right-click on free partition, and select format. (This was recommended to me by Dell support)
I tried this to no avail. If the drive was being formatted, there was no indication of it, other than the WD drive would periodically flash red. No status bar came up; I had no idea what if any progress was being made.
2. Another person on another Dell Community forum (ricochet, I believe?) told me to download, install and run DLG for Windows. I did this for two reasons: one to see if I could save the disk prior to reformatting it (yes, I did it before attempting step 1 above). No luck. I then later used this program to reformat the drive. It initially appeared to work; status information was provided, and it reported that the drive was formatted and ready to use. Progress! But not so. When attempting to access the drive, Windows informed me that the drive needed formatting. I rebooted just to make sure. Windows still informed me that the drive needed formatting, and would I like to do so. So I selected YES. That was about 16 hours ago.
Windows appears to be using the same formatting procedure as described in step 1 above (it asked me the same questions; came up with the same menu), but this window includes a status bar. I started formatting when I went to bed last night, and this morning, there is only the smallest green bar on a 2.5" progress line. I've been up for a few hours and that bar hasn't changed. The red light on the WD drive periodically and irregularly blinks.
At this rate, it will be days, if not weeks, if not months, for this drive to be formatted. This simply can't be right.
NOTES:
a. the laptop is docked into a docking station. the WD drive is plugged into the docking station. (I am now wondering if I should have connected the WD directly to the laptop, detached from the docking station, for the purpose of formatting the drive).
b. I am in administrator mode.
c. I have (and am using) external power for the USB drive.
Western Digital technical support has been insufficient. I turn instead to this community to see if you can advise me. I hope so. Thanks in advance.
-- J. Smith
jillaine
11 Posts
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January 28th, 2004 14:00
A couple of other things I've noticed:
d. The windows format option (through Disk Manager) only formats in NTFS.
e. The DLG program only formats in FAT32.
I now wonder if the FAT32 formatting attempted by the DLG program was not recognized for some reason by Windows.
Frankly, I don't care which format is used. I just want a functional external hard drive that I can archive things on and use as backup storage.
oops... my week-long impatience is showing.
-- Jillaine
jillaine
11 Posts
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February 3rd, 2004 15:00
GTSCOT,
I recommend you try Western Digital's phone support. You get 30 free days from the first time you call them.
I basically gave up on the email support; it took too long for replies.
To close out this topic (at least for me), my reformatting attempts revealed something massively wrong with the drive and they're replacing it (it's still under warrantee).
As for the 1.1 speed, when my drive WAS working, I didn't notice any slowness. I guess maybe you would if you were used to 2.0 speed; but frankly I had no problems with the speed-- and that's the case on all my other USB 2.0 devices I've got off this Latitude (scanner, cd r/w drive, etc.)
Good luck, GTSCOT. Please post the results here. I'd like to know because I think I want to do the same thing when my new drive gets here (divide it up).
Also, curious to hear from you and others what advantages you see to the partitioning you're considering. Thanks.
- j. smith
GTSCOT
18 Posts
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February 3rd, 2004 15:00
I am having similar questions. I just bought a WD 80GB USB External. It comes pre-formated as 1 big Fat32 Partition of 75GB. I went to tech support at WD, and drilled thru the knowledge base. They send you to the XP Disk Manager window you mentioned. That window is no good if the drive is already fully formatted.as there is no unused space available to click on. . I emailed off a question to tech support and am awaiting an answer.
Meanwhile I found that although the WD knowledgebase doesn't specifically address the question of re-formatting, it does in their knowledgebase answer ID#1021 :-How to change the format type (file system) of a hard drive in Windows XP.
I want to re-partition the one 75GB partition into 3 smaller drives (35GB,20GB,20GB).
I suspect what needs to be done in my case is to use Windows disk manager to delete the 80GB partition (so far I have not put any data on it.) . Then I should be able to re-format into as many FAT32 partitions as I want.
In your case if Windows Disk manager can "see" the drive and reports it's size, you should be able to do the same thing i.e. delete the old partition and re-format. (I'm assuming you are using Windows XP). I'll update this post ,if & when I hear back from Dell.
I'm also not happy about the 1.1 USB only speeds on my Latitude, but that's a different challenge.
GTSCOT
18 Posts
0
February 3rd, 2004 19:00
Jillaine,
I got tel support. Only waited about 10 minutes. Just as I thought. You go into Windows XP disk manager. Select the 75GB USB Drive and delete the partition.
Then you can create smaller partitions. Use the menu choice of Create Partition. You can then select the size and the name that you want. I selected the first partition to be 31.5 GB. (If you select more than 32GB, you will not see a choice for FAT32 and NTFS, you will only see the latter.) I selected FAT32, Primary Partiton and named it Graphics as it's solely going to be used for Photoshop which creates huge files. When that was done formatting I had 45 or so GB left unallocated. Right click again on the unallocated portion and create another Primary Partition. Select your size, and give it a name and go. Repeat as you wish.
Reason I want to break up the drive, is I want a partition of about 20GB purely to Backup my Laptop HD. (I named this partition BACKUPS). I needed a big space for Photoshop, and I have one more I called GENERAL of about 22 GB just for storing other stuff that I don't need when I travel. My original Laptop drive has about 5 GB left out of the original 18.5 GB. So it's time to do some housekeeping. I thought it best to have an external USB drive to do all of this and get me the space needed for Photoshop.
Since I have a docking station C Dock II, I'll probably stick a PCI 2.0 card in that to get me the high speed USB ports, since I'll only need that when not I'm travelling and using the new external USB Drive. Hope this helps.