My 500GB Western Digital Blue HDD started failing after a GTA 5 installation crashed about six months ago. CrystalDiskInfo reports 100% health, but MiniTool shows the drive as a bad disk. Whenever I right-click the drive, open Disk Management, or run diskpart commands such as list disk, Windows hangs at "Connecting to Virtual Disk Service" or stops responding. I don't need the files anymore—I just want to erase and reuse the drive. Is there a way to format or wipe it outside of Windows, or does this mean the disk has failed?
3 Answers
The crash probably didn’t cause the failure; the drive was likely already developing a hardware problem. If accessing the disk makes Disk Management and diskpart hang, Windows is probably waiting for the drive to respond to unreadable sectors or a failing controller. A “Good” result in CrystalDiskInfo doesn’t guarantee the disk is healthy, especially if the relevant SMART attributes aren’t being reported correctly. I wouldn’t trust this drive with any data. Disconnect it and replace it rather than trying to reuse it.
You can try connecting the drive through a different SATA cable, motherboard port, or a USB-to-SATA adapter to rule out a connection problem. If it still freezes the system, boot from a Linux live USB or another disk and see whether a partition tool can detect it. However, if the drive locks up there too, software probably won’t be able to fix it. A secure erase or full format won’t repair a mechanically or electronically failing HDD, so replacement is the practical answer.
A disk that causes the operating system to hang whenever it is queried is generally not a normal partition or formatting problem. You can attempt one last test with the drive disconnected, then boot normally and connect it through another port or adapter. If the computer immediately starts stalling again, stop using it and replace it. The reported health percentage alone isn’t enough to make a failing drive safe or reliable.
I already tried diskpart, but it freezes as soon as I run list disk or attempt to select the drive. I’ll test another cable and try accessing it outside Windows, but I’m assuming it may simply be dead.