Formatting a 1TB HD

[mian]

I've got a 1TB sata WD Caviar Black. Ran a real format, ntfs, with XP Computer Management after hooking it up instead of a quick format because I wanted to make sure it was 100%. It's been 6 hours and it just passed 10% (it has been progressing at an even rate). I knew it would take a while, but 60 hours? That seems excessive. It didn't take that long to ship cross country (free no less).

Am I just whining/is that a normal format rate? Or is that a sign of a problem like XP is finding and blocking off bad sectors or something else? Would a quick format + a separate surface scan take just as long?

Thanks =)

[reven]

yeah that seems a bit long, copying that much data between 2 drives, would only take about 20 hours (ive had to do that recently, well 3TB of data)

[pBS]

did you restart after it detected it first time? before reboot it works, but slowly as it's in compatibility mode...
quick format is fine, there shouldn't be any defects you can see till the internal error correction is full..
but i bet it runs faster after reboot...
either that or you used wrong cluster size for a big drive..

[toboR]

I recently installed a new 1.5TB drive. After I started the format I read that quick format is perfectly fine for a new drive.

I left the house while it was working, so I couldn't say exactly how long it took, but I was back in less than 8 hours, and it had completed the format.

tobor

[pcostanza]

I've often found that using a program like Partition Magic or Acronis Disk Manager is faster at formatting. Not sure why but my 1TB Seagate only took about an hour.

[nightwalker]

I just set it to format and went to bed, next morning it was done. There's nothing worse than sitting there watching a format.

[mian]

I'm at 33% now.

I did not restart after the drive was detected, and I didn't even pay attention to cluster size (it is whatever the default was). :o Since, at least for now, this drive is going to be my media drive, I'll set the cluster size highish when I restart.

Thanks everyone.

[mian]

I canceled the format and restarted, but the speed was the same after the restart. A quick format then failed to complete because of an error.

Review_The_fastest_1TB_hard_drive_yet

They took 37 hours to format in a problem that they believed to be a problem with a particular Vista update. I'm wondering if whatever bit of code caused that also got into xp sp3. Or if the drive is bad--but I don't know that until I actually finish a format.

[Graham]

Are there any utilities on the WD website that might tell you what's going on?

Good Luck

[mian]

Are there any utilities on the WD website that might tell you what's going on?

Good Luck

I already downloaded their tools package, but at this point, I just want to finish a format and see if the drive functions normally afterwards.