I installed a new WD SN8100 SSD in the second M.2 slot of my MSI PRO B650 motherboard. My existing drive is in slot 1 and contains data I need to transfer, so I want to use the new drive as the destination. Windows detects the new SSD, assigns it drive letter D:, and shows it as Basic, Online, 1,863 GB, RAW, and Healthy (Basic Data Partition), but Disk Management fails with "Windows was unable to complete the format."
I also tried running CHKDSK with /f and /r, but it only displayed the command options instead of checking the drive. I have removed and reseated the SSD several times, but the problem remains. What is the correct way to initialize or format it, and how can I tell whether the drive is defective?
2 Answers
CHKDSK generally cannot repair a drive that Windows sees as RAW, especially when it has no usable filesystem. If cleaning and recreating the partition still fails, check the SSD’s health and firmware with the manufacturer’s utility, confirm the motherboard BIOS detects it correctly, and try another M.2 slot if available. A brand-new drive that cannot be cleaned or formatted may be faulty and should be exchanged.
If the SSD is new and contains nothing you need, open an elevated Command Prompt and use DiskPart to remove the existing partition information, then create and format a fresh volume. Be very careful to select the correct disk first, because the clean command permanently removes the partition table and all data on the selected drive.
The usual sequence is: diskpart, list disk, select disk X, clean, create partition primary, format fs=ntfs quick, assign, then exit. Replace X with the number of the new SSD, verifying its size before running clean. You can also delete the RAW partition in Disk Management and create a new NTFS volume, but DiskPart is often more reliable when the partition metadata is corrupted.
So “clean” is the DiskPart command I should use rather than just deleting the volume? I’ll double-check the disk number and make sure I don’t select my existing drive.