SATA Format very, very slow, often hangs??

[jsteph]

I have a WD 250 GB SATA 3Gb drive, on an ASUS P5NSLI (BIOS 0601) board, which supports 4 SATA devices. When I go into Windows Disk Managment mmc, and select that thing to format it, it seems to hang--it never even says what % it's completed, it just says 'formatting'. It was like this for 2 full hours, then the mouse froze an the entire computer locked.

Then I went into CMD and did a command line format, and it never got past 0% formatting, and then the screen froze completely--this time after only(!) about 45 min--but still 0%.

Anybody know what this might be? Or should I be more patient? Thanks,
--Jim

 

[Freestone]

I'd start analysis by downloading diagnostics from Western Digital's website and running them. If they run okay, I'd suspect some kind of driver issue in Windows.

 

[firewolfrl]

here is what I would do
download the latest version of Hiren's boot CD and burn the ISO
disconnect all the drives except the drive you want to format

using the WD utility or Powermax from Maxtor (they are on Hiren's)

zero the drive

load partition magic or any program that will format a drive in a non-windows enviroment
there is quite the selection on Hiren's

format the drive

chkdsk /r the drive

 

[jsteph]

Well I've updated my bios, updated the nVidia sata drivers, and got the WD Lifeguard tools and used that to try and format. I tried jumpering it down to sata 150 mode too, thinking maybe my hardware couldn't really support the 300 mode, but nothing worked. Everything says the drive is fin, WD says it's perfect, Windows says it's 'Healthy', everything. But within about 2 minutes of any file operations, ie, copying a large file or many files--it just stops and says there's a crc error.

I really don't think that another formatting tool will change this--and if it does, then I don't trust this drive. If it's so delicate and flaky that it can only be formatted via some 3rd party tool and then only by going into a non-windows mode and crossing my fingers to do it, then I could never feel comfortable with my data on it.

I think the drive is simply a bad egg. It's a brick and I'm taking it back to Tiger. Thanks for all your help, I'll post the results of my replacment,
--Jim

 

[Grenage]

The drive was actually partitioned/FDISK'd before format, wasn't it?


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[jsteph]

Yes, I did it first through Windows' Disk Management, then through WD's Data Lifeguard tools.

The volume acted fine and held data, and I could move files back and forth, but it was after a sustained minute or more of large transfers that it would error out--always. It also felt very, very hot--hotter than any drive I'd ever had before.
--Jim

 

[Grenage]

Ah fair enough then. I know it was a retarded thing to ask, but about 8 years ago I attempted to format a drive without partitioning it first, completely slipped my mind. That format was about 10 times slower than expected, and hung half-way through. Surprised it even started!

Sounds like a defective drive then, doesn't it.

Russell.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[jsteph]

Well I just got home with a Seagate 250Gig Sata3 drive. I went to Disk Management, and did the partition/format, and it immediately went to 1%...2%...and so on.

I have a good feeling about this one, there was no fidgityness, it just did what it was supposed to do.

However...prior to doing this I went into the Control Panel/system/hardware/device manager, and looked up the ATAPI controllers, and found the NVidia SATA controller there, and it had a Speed Test button. I ran it, and it shows a bar graph of Theoretical, Burst, and Sustained speeds. Theoretical is of course 300 MBps, but the Burst, which I'd expect to be at least close to that, was only 146, which I would expect maybe from a SATA 150 drive. The sustained was about 60, which seems ok for sustained.

So is 50% of theoretical reasonable for Burst mode? It seems light to me. The ASUS mobo clearly states SATA 3Gb, as does the drive. The Nvidia driver is the newest they had available.
Thanks for any more help,
--Jim

 

[Grenage]

Hi again, Jim.

I've not used the Nvidia benchmarker before. Out of curiosity have you tried HDTACH? It's a very good benchmarking utlity that you can use to compare with other real-world results (a lot of benchmarkers use it).

You can find it at:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[jsteph]

Grenage,
Yes, I have HDTach, and it shows about 180 for burst, which suggests that it is greater than a sata 150, so I'm glad there, but I just figured that in burst mode, with no other programs running, that I'd get much closer to theoretical.

The seagate is running smoothly, after moving nearly 200 gig of data to it, so I'm out of the woods on that. The WD was definitely a bad drive--that's a first for WD in my experience. I've personally purchased over 20 WD drives over the years, and have never ever had one fail, I always do a replace after about 3-4 years, which is typically when the size of the drive dips towards the low end of the spectrum for that era's storage requirements.
--Jim

 

[Grenage]

I'd say 180 burst is a decent speed for a Seagate 250, can't complain too much about that.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[jsteph]

Yes, that's a big jump over my other drives, which are ATA-100, and they burst at around 80, so I was hoping for 80% from the SATA 300, or around 240.
--Jim