Is this even possible?

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12-31-2009, 08:49 AM
David2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by pio_masaki

The program I mentioned, fat32format, does not care how large the drive is.

I used this software before (followed the guide here: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/ind...at32format.htm)

I used the commandline application (NOT the GUI version) and this is what happens:

http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/a...eilld3/ps1.jpg

http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/a...eilld3/ps2.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by JNABK

Having an active partition is initializing it.

You said your getting a corrupt partition after formatting it and that would explain why its telling you its not formatted or initialized.

What im suggesting is to delete all the partitions on the drive, format it NTFS and initialize it with a single partition of the full drive's size available.

Then you can use ul_format.exe to format it to FAT32 and install your games with USBUtil 2.0. You know you dont need to create other partitions, just create folders and put stuff in them instead. ;)

I have been doing exactly that, I format the drive as NTFS using all space and set it as active.
http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/a...eilld3/ps3.jpg

Then I start running ul_format.exe
http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/a...eilld3/ps4.jpg

But it always ends up with the same outcome...
http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/a...eilld3/ps5.jpg

I'm really at a loss to what else I can do now :(
12-31-2009, 09:48 AM
dlanor

Quote:

Originally Posted by David2009

Ok, it makes no coherent sense to me either... this is what initially happened

I have a 120GB portable buffalo turbousb hard drive and originally it worked a charm.

However, a few weeks ago, I needed to to reformat it from FAT32 (which it was originally) to NTFS.
During this, my laptop decided to restart itself, so the drive was unformatted.

This event raises some crucial questions ?

1: WHY did the laptop restart ?
This is not a normal action during a locked HDD operation such as a reformatting.

2: WHAT happened to the drive being formatted, at this abnormal abortion ?
2a: Did the hardware error that triggered the restart in itself damage the drive ?
2b: Did the restart operation in the middle of low-level formatting damage the drive ?
2c: Does your USB HDD have a separate power supply, or does it feed off the USB connector only ?

Depending on how your particular laptop works its restart operation may very well include power-cycling the USB ports off and on, and for that to happen during a low-level format operation can have fatal effects both for the drive mechanism and for the disk surface.

Quote:

I just formatted it again format to NTFS (Will not format to fat FAT32, unless an NTFS partion is present; even with 3rd party software such as swissknife v3, USBAdvance etc)

Now, it will not stay formatted at all, either in FAT32 or NTFS. I can format it as NTFS, but as soon as I add files to the drive, remove the device, then insert it again, all data is removed from it. It also becomes unformatted and 'Not Initialized.'

To me this indicates that some permanent damage has been done, either to the disk surface, the drive mechanism, or to the electronics of the drive controller.

The reason why you notice it only after removal and reinsertion of the drive is probably because you are really looking at cache content directly after the format attempt.

Quote:

I have taken the SATA drive out of the USB enclosure and placed it in my laptop, to rule out any USB interface problems, but it still does not work. I have ran the samsung diagnostics tool (since it is a samsung HDD inside)

If the drive can not be formatted properly, even to NTFS format and when connected directly to a SATA bus of your computer, then something is obviously wrong with the drive at a hardware level. This goes beyond any 'soft' format errors, and I'm afraid I see no way to recover that drive.

Quote:

This was the very first method I tried, but I got an error saying the drive was too large to be in fat32, or that it had not been possible to format it.

That is just the normal Windows refusal to let you choose FAT32 for a large drive. That is why we use other programs to do such formatting. Once the drive has been formatted Windows has no problem using its FAT32 format for all file operations.

But for your particular drive I think you now also have hardware problems that prevent any formatting from working.

Best regards: dlanor
12-31-2009, 10:22 AM
David2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlanor

This event raises some crucial questions ?

1: WHY did the laptop restart ?
This is not a normal action during a locked HDD operation such as a reformatting.

2: WHAT happened to the drive being formatted, at this abnormal abortion ?
2a: Did the hardware error that triggered the restart in itself damage the drive ?
2b: Did the restart operation in the middle of low-level formatting damage the drive ?
2c: Does your USB HDD have a separate power supply, or does it feed off the USB connector only ?

1: I have no idea to why it restarted (about 20 seconds into format it just restarted, but gave no indication that it was about to restart)

2: Nothing happened as such, but upon restart, it was not formatted or initialized and that's the way it has been since then.

2a+b: I presume that this damaged the drive, it was working fine up until this point.

2c: It feeds from the USB connector, but for old USB 1.1 interface, it has a seperate port for a seperate power supply (but this also runs from USB).

Perhaps the most confusing part is that providing I don't add any data to the drive, I can add + remove it as much as I want + it remians formatted.
This only leads me to believe the plates themselves are damaged in some way.
Either way, I have now ordered a new sata drive, since the usb enclosure is working fine, and I plan to use this new one.
12-31-2009, 12:49 PM
dlanor

Quote:

Originally Posted by David2009

2c: It feeds from the USB connector, but for old USB 1.1 interface, it has a seperate port for a seperate power supply (but this also runs from USB).

So if your laptop (presumably) power-cycles the USB port as part of its system initialization then this was the equivalent of pulling out the power cord of a traditional HDD with its own PSU. And doing that during a low-level format nearly always causes damage.

Quote:

Perhaps the most confusing part is that providing I don't add any data to the drive, I can add + remove it as much as I want + it remians formatted.

No, I don't think it does. It only means that you have a large cache to browse, plus idiotic firmware with insufficient verification of the format result, and an inappropriate write-back policy. You already stated that removing/reinserting the drive reduces it to 'unformatted' state again, which is obviously because that invalidates the cache, which is the only place where the 'written' data was truly placed...

Quote:

This only leads me to believe the plates themselves are damaged in some way.

I agree with that.

Quote:

Either way, I have now ordered a new sata drive, since the usb enclosure is working fine,

I'm not so sure about that though. It really should do some verification of data writes, which should have caused it to invalidate cache when the writes fail. But I guess this might be how that enclosure is supposed to work anyway. Which should work fine when the drive itself is healthy. The only real problem is that you have no guarantee that it won't happen again in the future...

Quote:

and I plan to use this new one.

I hope this one works out better for you than the last one.

Best regards: dlanor
12-31-2009, 01:16 PM
David2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlanor

I'm not so sure about that though. It really should do some verification of data writes, which should have caused it to invalidate cache when the writes fail. But I guess this might be how that enclosure is supposed to work anyway. Which should work fine when the drive itself is healthy. The only real problem is that you have no guarantee that it won't happen again in the future...

I guess I can't be sure it won't happen again, but today I have placed another drive in the enclosure (40gb, unformatted, not initialized) and it formatted smoothly into fat32 when using ul_format.exe, so hopefully the enclosure is fine for now.
(The only reason I don't want to use the 40gb drive is because it will fill up to quickly)

Just want to say thankyou to everyone for all of your help.

many thanks, dave :)
01-02-2010, 11:47 AM
pio_masaki

As usual dlanor explains something far better then I ever could. I did mention the drive not writing data to the platters, though not how or why this would cause the issues at hand. dlanor has a gift.

Sorry to hear the HDD is probably dead, though. I just lost two 100 GB HDDs in a raid 0 last month. Plus my 320GB "storage" HDD last week.
01-02-2010, 02:15 PM
David2009

It's weird how the piece of hardware we rely upon the most is also the most unreliable piece of hardware.

I guess the only way to ensure we don't lose any data is to have many backup copies of it.

And you are right, dlanor is truly remarkable when it comes to this :)

Sorry for your large loss of drives too, it makes my loss look extremely small!

Once again, thankyou for everybodies help on this matter!

I think we can safely close this post now

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