Storage Solutions External HDD woes...

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Amien

Amien

Galvanizer
Hey guys, im stuck with a peculiar problem, as follows:-

I just bought a 500GB Maxtor external drive.
As i plugged it in, it was pre-formatted and showed up in my computer under "Devices with removable storage" . it showed about 450 GB of available space
I transferred some data to test it, ran HD tach, etc...
After a while i decided to change the setting in drive properties from "Optimize for Quick Removal" to, "Optimize for Performance" as i always did with previous HD's ( those were internal drives with an external casing). Now, i was asked to reboot, and when i did, the drive showed up as a local disk (J: ), in RAW, unformatted. The wierd thing is, when i tried to format it, it showed the drive capacity as 24GB only :huh: . So instead of using right-click format, i formatted the drive from Run>cmd by using format j:/fs:ntfs.
After it formatted, it stayed as a 24 GB partition local disk. This was something i've never encountered before.

Now, obviously i wasn't going to give up such a huge amount of space for questionalble "performance" so i changed it back from "Optimize for Performance" to "Optimize for Quick Removal", hoping this would undo the changes. I was not prompted for a reboot, but did it anyway.

Alas, no change, it's still a 24GB local disk partion even though it says its back to "Optimize for Quick Removal" mode. As i rebooted it went back to being a RAW partion. I tried formatting again, this time it says the drive capacity is 811GB :| . Im formatting as i type this, im not sure it's going to work out. EDIT: It didn't complete, it wont format. Also im pretty sure the drive is working perfectly fine, there's some other wierd problem...

I tried system restore, no use, it still shows up a local drive J, i want it to back to it's pre-formatted state. How do i do this? :(

Sorry for the long post. Im in urgent need to back-up some data so want to sort this as soon as possible. You all have my eternal gratitude for any help/suggestions.

Thanks.
 
Have you installed SP2? Win XP needs SP2 to recognize large HDDs.

Your motherboard should also support large capacity HDDs.
 
use some linux live cd and format to fat from there. Update your windows. You only get 465 GB of space on a 500 gig drive.
 
^
Im using XP SP3.
It's not a drive problem because as i said, it was working perfectly in it's pre-formatted state. The problems are occuring after i switched to Performance mode.

Any more suggestions? :(
 
rapt0r said:
Start-->run-->diskmgmt.msc

How many partitions is it showing there exactly ? Try deleting all of them and create single big one .Also try this

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool | Peripherals Download | PC World . Try on some other system too ( it's usb anyway ). Last resort, go with some linux live cd and try from there. If it still doesn't work, you have a really screwed up external drive ready for replacement.
Click to expand...

+1. Just right click on 'My Computer' -> Manage -> Disk Management. You should be able to see and the state of the HDD and be able to delete all volumes and then format it as a single volume from there. If it doesnt work, RMA time.

2. USB disks are not supposed to be switched to 'Optimize for performance mode' by the way, can lead to data loss :P
 
Hmm...maybe it was pre-formatted as FAT32(which is not easily accomplished under XP) and somehow, the partition info got screwed up. You need to delete all partitions on the 500GB HDD and then try a reformat.

If you have Hiren's boot CD, there are a no.of utilities that will help you get rid of partitions on your USB HDD when you boot from the CD.

Otherwise, I think you need a partition manager like Ranish partition mgr or you will have to work with FDISK once you boot into the XP Command Prompt mode and delete all the partitions on the drive.

Edit: Try techie's suggestion first.
 
It is very safe to format external usb hard disks ( not flash drives ) as NTFS and also optimize for performance. Unlike flash drives they have serious read/write speed but are bottle necked by USB limits only so there is not really lot of caching by OS . Just make sure you do a safe removal before unplugging, i mostly pull out USB disks without 'safely removing' when i know there is no read/write operation going on, haven't corrupted my usb drive yet. DONT TRY ON PEN DRIVES OR MEMORY CARDS :)
 
rapt0r said:
It is very safe to format external usb hard disks ( not flash drives ) as NTFS and also optimize for performance. Unlike flash drives they have serious read/write speed but are bottle necked by USB limits only so there is not really lot of caching by OS . Just make sure you do a safe removal before unplugging, i mostly pull out USB disks without 'safely removing' when i know there is no read/write operation going on, haven't corrupted my usb drive yet. DONT TRY ON PEN DRIVES OR MEMORY CARDS :)
Click to expand...

I never do the above, and get irritated when i see others doing this.

Tried Disk management, didn't work, HD kept showing up as RAW on restart.

Tried everything, as a last resort, even used system restore to revert to a 2 day old save point.

Finally what worked for me is the Maxtor*MaxBlast software, it formatted the disk to it's correct size in a jiffy, and now it's working great in performance mode.
Thanks for all those who replied!, will rep as many as this thing allows me to :)
Mods can close this thread now :happy:
 
I believe we should always set USB Drives properites as Optimized for QUICK Removal only. then only it will be considered as a removable disk in windows.

when u set it as optimize for maximum performance drive, it will asuume that it's a non removable disk and it will take that as a System drive.

I do have the same MAXTOR Basics 500GB, which i bought 8 months back. Still works perfectly. showing up 500GB. Some times if u dont removed the USB Drive propely, by using removed USB drive in system tray, it will act like that.

it's normal all USB Drive does taht. i also got panic few times, wherz my data like that..

but later i rebooted and plug it on again. worked fine..

it's more the less, windows problem only. not drive problem.

Big Guyz:: Sorry if i'm wrong.
 
nithinmohantk said:
I believe we should always set USB Drives properites as Optimized for QUICK Removal only. then only it will be considered as a removable disk in windows.

when u set it as optimize for maximum performance drive, it will asuume that it's a non removable disk and it will take that as a System drive.

I do have the same MAXTOR Basics 500GB, which i bought 8 months back. Still works perfectly. showing up 500GB. Some times if u dont removed the USB Drive propely, by using removed USB drive in system tray, it will act like that.

it's normal all USB Drive does taht. i also got panic few times, wherz my data like that..

but later i rebooted and plug it on again. worked fine..

it's more the less, windows problem only. not drive problem.

Big Guyz:: Sorry if i'm wrong.
Click to expand...

Thanks, reassuring to hear from someone also using the same product.
Im still running it in Performance Mode, no problem so far, and as you mentioned, once i transferred about 50 GB of data on to it and restarted, it showed up as a RAW drive nearly causing me to have a heart attack, but replugging solved that problem, it's been running well since then. :)
 
techie_007 said:
+1. Just right click on 'My Computer' -> Manage -> Disk Management. You should be able to see and the state of the HDD and be able to delete all volumes and then format it as a single volume from there. If it doesnt work, RMA time.

2. USB disks are not supposed to be switched to 'Optimize for performance mode' by the way, can lead to data loss :P
Click to expand...

This is what I thought as well ... :huh:. Hmm...

Cody

computer repair memphis ... we know computers
 
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