Hi everyone! I've just got an old 4 TB hard drive from my workplace because we upgraded our server. The issue is that this hard drive is currently in RAW format, and Windows doesn't recognize it. I'm told it's still functional since it was in active use before being replaced. I've spent a couple of days trying to format it so I can use it again, but my attempts to format it to NTFS are progressing extremely slowly—it's been 15 hours and only 1% has completed! The quick format option fails immediately with an error message saying "Quick format failed." Any advice on how to tackle this? Thanks!
2 Answers
If it’s a hard disk drive, double-check the jumper settings. If it’s set to RAID or slave mode instead of master, that could cause issues with formatting. The software might be waiting for the paired drives to respond.
The HDD I have doesn't have any jumper configured, so that shouldn't be it.
Try using the Command Prompt with admin privileges. Type in "diskpart", then "list disk" to see your drives. Make sure you identify the correct one by size, then enter "clean" to wipe it. After that, check Disk Management to see if you can reinitialize it afterwards. Just be careful not to wipe the wrong drive!
Thank you, I will give that a shot!
I attempted the 'clean' command, but I encountered an error saying 'DiskPart error: The device is not ready.' Any tips on what to do next?
Interestingly, a colleague of mine has the same 4 TB HDD, and his worked fine. He formatted it using a Linux file system.