Formatting new hdd, stops at 73%

Livzz

Livzz

New Member
Hey guys,

I got a new hard drive the other day, and I've tried performing a full format on it several times so that i can use it, but it stops at 73%. No error messages come up, it just stops progressing. I tried leaving it on over night to see if it just needed more time, but it stayed at 73%.

Is it just a dud HDD, or is there something i can do ti fix it?

the hard drive is a WD15EARS

Thanks!
Paul
 
When it stops, is the activity light still illuminated (or solid)? Did you confirm all the settings were correct (pretty rare they aren't) Have you tried formatting the drive in another machine?
 
The activity light was no longer solid, but it did flash every now and then (probably due to background processes etc).

I haven't tried it in another machine yet, I'll try that tomorrow.

If the same thing happens in a different machine, what would be the next step?

Thanks for your help!
 
If you want to fully format that HDD,format it with the DOS tool called KILL DISK 4.1 inside of the DOS environment.I am pretty sure that will work with no problems...
You can simply run it from the DOS environment directly from your USB stick...
Here is the picture how that looks like:
active-killdisk-dos.png

If you don't know how to prepare your USB stick to be bootable so you can boot from it and do all this,tell me and with the Team Viewer I will connect to your computer and do the job for you.

NOTE: When formatting the HDD with KILL DISK 4.1,if you want to completely format the entire HDD,be sure to select that HDD and not his partition!!!



Cheers!
 
Last edited:
A quick format stopped at 73% as well...

Thanks for the killdisk idea, I'll try that next - but for now, I've found a small utility called "hdd low level format tool", which I'm trying now. I'll post again with the results.
 
The "hdd low level format tool" managed to format the entire drive!

only thing is... I'm now using winXP x32 (separate machine), whereas when I began trying to format the drive, I was on my main PC running vista x64. This means I now need to deal with the GPT Protective Partition...

I'm stuck on this winXP machine until the end of Jan, so i'll try writing zeros with Kill Disk.
 
LoL instead of having torture with so many programs,you could already format your HDD 100 times with the KILL DISK :P
Anyway do it and tell me if it worked.
NOTE: KILL DISK might need up to 19 hours to format the HDD completely,but this is the case ONLY ON SOME HDDs!!!
 
I just tried formatting with kill disk, but the drive still won't work...

I wasn't here at the time though so i'm not sure if kill disk managed to fully complete a 'write-zeros' operation or not.

any other suggestions??
 
The WD diagnosis utility doesn't work on vista... bummer.

I think i'll have to get the shop to test it for me.

thanks anyway guys!
 
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