How long to format an external drive?

[1001gear]

It's a 4TB WD my book. I know it's good to go out the box and I even ran the supplied diagnostic, comes up good w 3.63 TB available. That took 3 hrs maybe.

I'm on Win7 / Core i3

Just wanna be sure and do the full format.

[Phil O'Keefe]

You're probably looking at a few hours.

[1001gear]

Got that. I've read 8hrs nominal but there are also reports of more and far more. Horrors.

 

Is 4 hrs unrealistic?

[Phil O'Keefe]

Got that. I've read 8hrs nominal but there are also reports of more and far more. Horrors.

 

Is 4 hrs unrealistic?

 

It could easily take four hours. It might take longer.

 

Isn't the drive already formatted? Why do you need to format it again?

[Phil O'Keefe]

You can if you want, but you can also scan a previously / factory formatted drive for bad sectors, which I think you said you already did. If so, you should be good to go now without needing to reformat it.

 

If you're worried about the time involved, why not start the formatting or scan right before going to bed? That way, it should be done when you get up the next morning.

 

[1001gear]

I keep reading that's what you do with a new drive to make sure it's up to spec and fit to keep. ID ing bad sectors and whatnot.

[MikeRivers]

Do drives still have bad sectors?

 

I generally format a drive before I use it, just to give me a good feeling that it works. But I don't buy large drives either. Takes too long to format, too long to back up, and there are too many eggs in that one basket to lose when it decides to quit.

 

Start the format before you go to sleep and it'll be done when you wake up.

[nat whilk II]

It's the process of checking for bad sectors that takes all the time in a format. If the diagnostic tool you ran already checked for bad sectors, then reformatting is probably redundant and unnecessary.

 

Bad sectors can be caused by either a physical defect in the disk (every hard drive is going to have some) or software-based errors. Only the software-based errors are fixable. The physical errors need to be tagged and avoided permanently to keep the drive from crashing.

 

The software-based errors tend to creep up over time and usage. A new drive should have negligible or zero software-based errors.

 

So a format that scans for and tries to repair bad sectors is a good idea for a drive that's been in use for some time. You might regain some space that way - but the errors based on a physical defect, you certainly don't want to regain.

 

All this to say - formatting your new drive again is unlikely to regain any significant space or improve performance in any way.

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

[1001gear]

The drive clocks in better than my internal drive lol. Just making sure while I'm still on WalMart's 30 day return period.

[1001gear]

@ Mike & Phil

 

To me, any drive a manufacturer sees fit to market as an external storage device brings up QC flags. So that, and it's probably good to get familiar with drive maintenance.

 

Thanks for the assist guys.

 

[1001gear]

Forgot this. I can't find the WD log. These are the Crystal Disk numbers.

Any red flags here? Is the "worst" column hypothetical?

 

 

 

[1001gear]

Bump

[WRGKMC]

If you installed diagnostic software on the disk, it may see that information as protected or come up as bad sectors using other diagnostic software.

 

With a drive so large, I suggest you partition it down into manageable sizes. You can use the main partition for recording wave files. Those files should be on the outside of the disk which runs the fastest. The other partitions can be for backing up whatever you need.

 

As you create each partition you'll probably be asked to quick format each partition.

It makes no sense formatting the entire drive without partitions because you'll simply be asked to format them again after partitioning.

 

I'd break the partitions down as a percentage of maybe 20% each. That will give you 10 partitions of about 400G each.

You can make more partitions to reduce the size of each partition. Using 5% should give you 20 partitions of 200G each.

Or you could make the main partition larger and leave the others smaller for backup. It really depends on what you plan on using the drive for.

 

I run several large internal drives. Some of the partitions I use for backup don't get touched for long periods of time so there's no need to defragment them. I use the main drive for recording. I think its set for 250G which will let me store tons of unfinished multi track projects. I may only use 25~50% of that partition before I complete those projects and store them on a backup partition. A cluttered 250G partition may take 15 minutes or more to completely defragment on my computer. Making the partitions larger serves no purpose other then making cleanup time take longer.

 

Having partitions can also save your ass if the drive starts to go down. Often times its the partition you use most that becomes corrupted.

Often times you can still get information off the backup partitions even though the main partition is toast. Again this all depends on your workflow.

Its always good to have more then one backup for your work. If it were me I would have bought four single 1T drives and used 3 of them for backup, then simply disconnect them when not in use. Then use the last one for current work. Having allot of information rotating on a disk not being used doesn't make allot of sense when you can simply plug the drive in to get it. Less wear and tear and less chance of being corrupted.

 

There again, some of these new drives will last you a decade or more before they need replacement. Again, its a matter of workflow and what you find is essential to your work.

[Phil O'Keefe]

@ Mike & Phil

 

To me, any drive a manufacturer sees fit to market as an external storage device brings up QC flags. So that, and it's probably good to get familiar with drive maintenance.

 

Thanks for the assist guys.

 

It's just one person, so it's hardly a trend or statistical proof, but I've been using external drives - both Firewire and later USB - for backups for years. I use USB drives by the boatload - every project I work on gets at least one for backups. While I have had a couple of internal hard drives fail, I've never had an external drive die on me.

[1001gear]

 

It's just one person, so it's hardly a trend or statistical proof, but I've been using external drives - both Firewire and later USB - for backups for years. I use USB drives by the boatload - every project I work on gets at least one for backups. While I have had a couple of internal hard drives fail, I've never had an external drive die on me.

 

This is kinda my point about storage drives. Most of their use span is inert. There may be situations like active archiving or partitioning as a work drive as WRGKMC suggested that a b grade drive may not survive.

[1001gear]

I see what you're saying about crash protection but this drive will be mostly for bulk storage of music and video files. I think I'd waste more space partitioning than anything. Phase two will be burning all the files to Blu-ray.

[MikeRivers]

 

It's just one person, so it's hardly a trend or statistical proof, but I've been using external drives - both Firewire and later USB - for backups for years. I use USB drives by the boatload - every project I work on gets at least one for backups. While I have had a couple of internal hard drives fail, I've never had an external drive die on me.

 

I know that when external USB drive packages first appeared, they were prone to failure due to inadaquate heat sinking. Drives may run cooler these days. I think the way to extend the life, probably to as long as you need it, is simply to leave the drive disconnected from the computer (and hence, power) when you aren't using it. If it's a backup, plug it in, dump the files to it, and then unplug it until the next time you need to back something up, or when you want to restore something from that drive. In other words, use it as a back-up device and not as a full time working drive.

[Phil O'Keefe]

With the exception of my Time Machine externals, that's pretty much how I do use them Mike. Maybe that's why I've had no real issues with failures.

[techristian]

When we did LOW LEVEL formatting in the past, even putting the sector markers down, BAD SECTORS would be LOCKED OUT from use, but I was under the impression , that is now done at the factory. Any "formatting" we do today is HIGH LEVEL formatting . I wouldn't expect to find any errors on a new drive today by just RIGHT CLICKING and selecting FORMAT.

 

Of course if you go to a low level formatting program, you will find errors, but only the errors that were probably already LOCKED OUT.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Dan

[MikeRivers]

When we did LOW LEVEL formatting in the past' date=' even putting the sector markers down, BAD SECTORS would be LOCKED OUT from use, but I was under the impression , that is now done at the factory. Any "formatting" we do today is HIGH LEVEL formatting . I wouldn't expect to find any errors on a new drive today by just RIGHT CLICKING and selecting FORMAT.[/quote']

 

Ah, yes. I remember using the DOS DEBUG utility to manually enter a program for low level formatting. Back in those days, a disk drive came with a label that listed all the bad sectors as tested at the factory. These days, when using the Windows or DOS FORMAT, particularly on a fairly old hard drive, it will tell you how many bytes you have available and how many are marked as bad and unavailable.

 

 

[WRGKMC]

When we did LOW LEVEL formatting in the past, even putting the sector markers down, BAD SECTORS would be LOCKED OUT from use, but I was under the impression , that is now done at the factory. Any "formatting" we do today is HIGH LEVEL formatting . I wouldn't expect to find any errors on a new drive today by just RIGHT CLICKING and selecting FORMAT.

 

Of course if you go to a low level formatting program, you will find errors, but only the errors that were probably already LOCKED OUT.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Dan

 

Most of the drives I've bought have been internal drives. With my next upgrade I'll be going all solid state all the way. My wife works at HP and was give a new high end workstation laptop with two SS drives. She's already got several others and its too big for hew needs so I'll likely be inheriting that one soon. The thing is incredible. Boots instantly within 2 or 3 seconds, even has Thunderbolt. There is no formatting with SS drives. They do have a lifespan however. Like thumb drives they do get old and fail.

 

Its still easy as its ever been to F disk a drive, wipe partitions and do a low level format. Even if its a USB slave you still have the option to low level or quick format a drive. Unless the drive is really old or corrupt I haven't gotten any bad sectors on any newer drives in at least 15 years.

 

I get allot of used drives from where I work too. The photo copier equipment they sell and service is all computerized now. When the drives fail its cheaper for the techs to just slap new ones in there. I wound up with boxes 50 of them I took home. I wipe all the partitions, including the hidden ones, do a low level format and most of them are perfectly fine. I may find one out of 10 that doesn't spin up or cant be reformatted.

The rest failed because of corrupt data files the machine simply couldn't read.

 

I don't use the drives for anything but secondary backups, but I have files and programs dating back to the 90's all still perfectly good. Most of the drives are around 100G or less so space isn't overly abundant but they are there if I ever need to retrieve the data. I learned a long time ago when I had a drive fail and lost a couple of grand worth of programs, you cant have too many backups of important stuff. Even a backup of a backup can fail as operating systems change.

 

 

Sometimes you can switch formatting types. and get rid of bad sectors. You can format a drive up to 15T using fat 32. MS simply put a blocker on there to promote NTFS. Its super simple too.

 

In Windows XP, go to > Start > Run. In Windows 7 you go to > Start, type > Run in the search field, and launch it. Type > cmd into the text field and click > OK. Enter the following command at the prompt: format /FS:FAT32 X:

Replace the letter X with the drive letter for the external device you wish to format and hit > Enter.

 

Chances are the bad sectors are just corrupt data that can be removes with another format type. Once you get a clean read on the drive you can switch back to NTFS.

 

You can also try exFAT which will work on large drives. If you have a win XT or 98 box its there as a format option. I think you have to use a 3rd party program if you have a newer OS, but a newer OS will recognize it just like all the others.

 

 

 

 

 

[1001gear]

Interesting hack there. You are gear charmed. You should have my user name. lol

[1001gear]

One more thing; is it tempting fate to surf while formatting?

[nat whilk II]

Forgot this. I can't find the WD log. These are the Crystal Disk numbers.

Any red flags here? Is the "worst" column hypothetical?

 

No, the worst column is historical.

 

All the utility programs like Crystal Disk access the S.M.A.R.T. data that is being logged continuously. Problem is, different HDD manufacturers define those S.M.A.R.T. categories differently to some degree, so there's no industry standard. That's why I figure using the disk tools that the manufacturer may have included with the disk is the better option for disk checking and error fixing, etc.

 

Also, HDDs have changed over time, and processes like "format" have changed over time. It's true that the real, initial "low level" format is a one-time process now done at the factory. HDD geometry is now so complicated and varied between manufacturers, that a PC "one-process fits all" low-level format is not possible with current drives. I've also heard that modern disk controllers are programmed to ignore attempts to repeat a true BIOS-level low-level format on disks. So you might think you're doing something when you're really not - like some people think they are perfoming "music"

 

Some people say, in order to more accurately trap bad sectors, to do a zero-write to the entire HDD. I don't have the deep expertise to know if this is absolutely a better option, but it's clear that a zero-write program will try to read-write every part of the drive, and bad sectors will be tagged and remapped out of addressable HDD space. Maybe this would give you better data.

 

I don't know if you have a red flag or not - I see that big 253 errors in the worst column, and in your position, that would bug me a little, too. But then, your HDD is so dang huge...sure you don't want to partition that sucker into two or three chunks??

 

I think that, if your S.M.A.R.T. shows a bad enough set of numbers, that you can use just that data to make a warranty claim (and not wait for an actual crash.) Again, something I've read, never done. But you might read the fine print if you haven't already tossed all that stuff.

 

Best 'o luck -

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1001gear]

spin retry count, recalibration retries, write error rates, as well as uncorrectable errors ( shouldn't this be incorrectible errors?) all have gone to 253 yet are currently at 100. Is this a breakdown of the same errors?

 

One ominous thought; spin up time is 187 as in 187.