Windows unable to complete format

[ron]

I recently upgraded the drive on my laptop and installed the old drive
in a USB enclosure. At first I was able to access the drive and view
the contents. However, I wanted to use the drive for data storage and
decided to try and remove the 5 partitions that I had and to reformat
the drive with just one NTFS partition. Not sure what I did but
somehow in that process I lost the ability to work with the drive.
Now when I first attach the drive, it is detected by the computer (but
it has no data on it).

I tried copying data onto the drive but was told the drive was not
formatted. I then opened disk manager and asked it to format the
drive. The format seemed to complete but then I got the message that
Windows was not able to complete the format.

Furthermore after that I was not able to remove the USB drive from my
computer even though it had disappeared from Windows Explorer
(happened as soon as I got the error message).

Is the drive shot or am I missing something after all of that messing
around?

Thanks, Ron

 

[cjt]

I recently upgraded the drive on my laptop and installed the old drive
in a USB enclosure. At first I was able to access the drive and view
the contents. However, I wanted to use the drive for data storage and
decided to try and remove the 5 partitions that I had and to reformat
the drive with just one NTFS partition. Not sure what I did but
somehow in that process I lost the ability to work with the drive.
Now when I first attach the drive, it is detected by the computer (but
it has no data on it).

I tried copying data onto the drive but was told the drive was not
formatted. I then opened disk manager and asked it to format the
drive. The format seemed to complete but then I got the message that
Windows was not able to complete the format.

Furthermore after that I was not able to remove the USB drive from my
computer even though it had disappeared from Windows Explorer
(happened as soon as I got the error message).

Is the drive shot or am I missing something after all of that messing
around?

Thanks, Ron

I'd pop into Linux (use a CD-live distribution if necessary) and clear
the partition table.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I recently upgraded the drive on my laptop and installed the old drive
in a USB enclosure. At first I was able to access the drive and view
the contents. However, I wanted to use the drive for data storage and
decided to try and remove the 5 partitions that I had and to reformat
the drive with just one NTFS partition. Not sure what I did but
somehow in that process I lost the ability to work with the drive.
Now when I first attach the drive, it is detected by the computer (but
it has no data on it).

It seems to me that the problems started with the installation of the
USB enclosure. I'd look at that for the source of the problems. Namely
put the old drive back into the laptop directly again, and try
formatting it from there first. You might want to use some kind of
Linux Live CD to do the reformatting. And if it's successfully
formatted, pop it back into enclosure and try viewing it from Windows
and Linux again.

Yousuf Khan

 

[ron]

Thanks for the replies, folks. Linux and the concept of "Live CD" are
new to me so I'll try your suggestions as soon as I can get up to
speed and create a "Linux Live CD".

Ron

 

[mike]

I recently upgraded the drive on my laptop and installed the old drive
in a USB enclosure. At first I was able to access the drive and view
the contents. However, I wanted to use the drive for data storage and
decided to try and remove the 5 partitions that I had and to reformat
the drive with just one NTFS partition. Not sure what I did but
somehow in that process I lost the ability to work with the drive.
Now when I first attach the drive, it is detected by the computer (but
it has no data on it).

I tried copying data onto the drive but was told the drive was not
formatted. I then opened disk manager and asked it to format the
drive. The format seemed to complete but then I got the message that
Windows was not able to complete the format.

Furthermore after that I was not able to remove the USB drive from my
computer even though it had disappeared from Windows Explorer
(happened as soon as I got the error message).

Is the drive shot or am I missing something after all of that messing
around?

Thanks, Ron

I had a similar problem with a disk that had been loaded with windows 7.
They appear to do something funky with the partition table. And the way
they set up the diagnostics partition causes stuff to break. Acronis, for
instance, won't back up a standard win7 drive with two partitions...
plus the hidden one. Diagnostic utilities fail to properly map the drive
letters. Chkdsk d: /F would lock up too.
I fixed it by clearing the partition table and creating my two
NTFS partitions with gparted.
When you reinstall windows 7 on a drive that's already partitioned
it doesn't try to create the diags partition.
I guess I gave up some ability to encrypt removable drives and such.
But Acronis works now.

 

[bbbl67]

Thanks for the replies, folks.  Linux and the concept of "Live CD" are
new to me so I'll try your suggestions as soon as I can get up to
speed and create a "Linux Live CD".

You simply do a search for "Ubuntu download" (most common Linux
distribution), and download the ISO image for the latest one. You burn
it to a CD, and then you reboot into that CD. Nothing else more
complicated than that.

Yousuf Khan

 

[ron]

Thought I'd report on the outcome of this. I am on Windows XP so it
wasn't a Windows problem. Having a very slow connection I chose to
download SliTax's LiveCD. Ran the ISO as suggested but Linux also
couldn't do anything with the drive though it did appear to be
visable.

The upshot of all of this is that I must have garbled up the drive
somehow in my original attempts at removing partitions and
formatting. I hooked the USB enclosure back up to my WindowsXP laptop
and took another look at it through Disk Manager. It appeared to have
a very large, healthy sector and a small unallocated one. The large
sector was/contained the MBR.

I deleted that sector, formatted the resulting single sector (which
completed successfully) and the drive now appears to be working
normally. Not sure what I did to cause the problem or why my fix
worked.

Thanks to all, Ron