Unable to format brand new 2.5" USB drive

milltown

A brand new 80GB 2.5" drive arrived in the post yesterday from Dabs.ie and I just put it in the USB enclosure it was bought for and tried it. Windows sees the USB side of things and tells me it's installed and ready. When I try it in My Computer/Explorer/Disk management I'm asked to format it but whether I try a quick or full format, it reports that it couldn't complete the format and/or the disk could not be formatted.

I have tried it in two different caddies, both of which worked fine in the past, same result.

I bought a drive on Ebay a few months ago and had similar problems. Eventually got it formatted by sticking it in an old laptop and letting a windows install run on it. With that drive though, when I tried to put data on it it would give delayed write errors and click like mad. I figured I had got a dud or remanufactured drive and returned it for a refund.

Now, a new drive from a reputable retailer is starting out the same way. Am I missing something with how I'm trying to format it? Is there a size limit for USB drives that I'm exceeding?

ethernet

I take it you're trying to format using NTFS. Try doing a complete format [takes longer] to check for bad sectors using Disk Management.

Also, how have you set the jumpers on the hard drive -- master, slave, cable select?

milltown

Tried the full format already, just takes longer to get the same error message.
No jumpers on the drive, nor is there any room for them the way the board with the ide connector sits against the drive. Never had any need for jumpers in a USB caddy before either.

Standard Toaster

Try and format it from safe mode (F8 on boot)
There could be an app running on your machone that's locking the drive.

Bradidup

Is there any way you can find out the make of the hard drive thats inside the caddy?, ie Maxtor, Seagate or Western Digital, If so you can go on to the makers website and down load hard drive tools, ie Maxblast for Maxtor drives, Lifeguard for Western Digital etc. I always found them very effective for Diagnostics , checking and formatting hard drives.

OMcGovern

Is the USB enclosure powered, or does it solely get its power from the USB cable?

The drive may require more power than the USB enclosure is providing.
I remember reading that some USB powered enclosures had a max disk size due to their power requirements. Bigger disks required a powered usb enclosure.

regards,
Owen

el Bastardo

The problem re formatting is happening because your PC's USB port isn't delivering enough juice to power your external 80GB drive. So, it keeps tripping out everytime you try use it. Even if it were already formatted, reliable file transfer would still be a problem.

As a general rule, you need an additional 5V power supply for external 2.5" HDDs over 40GB (some PCs have better USB ports than others). Most external enclosures have either a spare USB or PS socket on them or a standard socket for a standard AC/DC transformer for this.

OMcGovern wrote:

Is the USB enclosure powered, or does it solely get its power from the USB cable?

The drive may require more power than the USB enclosure is providing.
I remember reading that some USB powered enclosures had a max disk size due to their power requirements. Bigger disks required a powered usb enclosure.

regards,
Owen