Full format of 15TB USB drive . . . 1% after 24 hours?!?

[AndrewNorCal]

So... I bought this used 15TB external USB Western Digital drive. I figure, hey, I'll just do a full format of the drive to find any bad sectors and life will be better for it. One less thing to go wrong later. right?

I connected it to the USB 3.0 port and I'm thinking, this can't take too long, maybe a day or two at the very most.

Yesterday, after 2 hours of formatting, it was at 1%. Now, an additional 24 hours later, it's still at 1%!! I'm patient, but at this rate, it could be months!

Thoughts from the hive mind?

Andrew

p.s. At about 29 hours in, it just jumped to 2%!
p.p.s. Weird, an hour later, it's now at 3%. It seems like it speeds up when I near it.

 

[alastairstevenson]

It's decades since a format would expose bad sectors on an HDD. Drives are intelligent and handle such errors internally.
Check out the values in the SMART attributes to see if the drive has had any problems in it's service life.

 

[Flintstone61]

Note to self....
Wow thats painfully slow.
I bet next time you choose a quick format lol...
@alastairstevenson Thanks for that information.

 

[wittaj]

Let's hope that isn't a preview of how slow and useless it will be for BI as we warned you USB can be in your other thread...

 

[IAmATeaf]

From my little experience if it’s taking an abnormal amount of time to progress then it may have encountered bad sectors and will then continually try to reread that sector before deciding the sector is really bad and reallocating it.

I had this with an 8Tb drive in my BI machine. One day nothing could write to it, but existing files could be read so I pulled it and ran SeaTools on it doing a full scan, the first scan took something like 2 plus days to complete with each successive scan completing quicker. Ran a full scan on it something like 5 times but I didn’t reinstall it so it’s sat on my desk at the mo until I can find some time to run some more scans on it.

SMART details shows the drive as being in good health so am now unsure what to do it. One thing I did notice is that SATA connector on the drive was loose so it’s left me wondering if that was the problem all along?

 

[AndrewNorCal]

Thanks, all! Yeah, I just killed the drive formatting. The SMART report is "OK".

I think I'm going to rethink my hardware a bit... that's the problem with new territory, learning hiccups along the way!

Andrew

 

[bp2008]

Normally I would just suggest a long SMART test, but I don't think that is available over USB usually.

 

[dmcIPCAM]

Are you formatting as NTFS? No encryption, correct?

This might not be doable in your case, but I've pulled drives from USB enclosures and just hooked them
up as a regular internal SATA drive.

 

[AndrewNorCal]

Thanks, that crossed my mind, I've been waiting for my local computer shop to bring in another connector cable, until then, I can only have a second drive, not a third, in the case.

Oh, and yes: NTFS, no encryption.

Andrew

 

[alastairstevenson]

The SMART report is "OK".

That simple status can be a bit optimistic.
Best to check out the individual attributes for any non-zero values such as in 5, 183, 184, 187, 195, 197, 198 and any low error-rate values in 1 and 7.

 

[AndrewNorCal]

Best to check out the individual attributes for any non-zero values such as in 5, 183, 184, 187, 195, 197, 198 and any low error-rate values in 1 and 7.

I found this page:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/163843-how-check-drive-health-smart-status-windows-10-a.html

which lists the error codes that you mention. Is it basically just a "no news is good news" kind of thing with the report? For instance, a long as those numbers don't appear when running a diagnostic, then those are not a worry?

Andrew

 

[dmcIPCAM]

Not to hijack the thread...

I found this page:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/163843-how-check-drive-health-smart-status-windows-10-a.html

Interesting information, thanks!

I just checked my Unraid storage drives: 6 x 4TB Western Digital "red" drives. This one is typical of all of them:



from the website regarding that SMART code:



Worse, the two parity drives are each 6TB and they show 4 years and 9 months!

Well, crap.
But hey, what could possibly go wrong with replacing and re-configuring an eight drive raid array?

 

[alastairstevenson]

Is it basically just a "no news is good news" kind of thing with the report? For instance, a long as those numbers don't appear when running a diagnostic, then those are not a worry?

SMART data can be queried at any time, not just after running a diagnostic test, they are cumulative values that are updated by the drive itself during its lifetime.
The specific attributes supported does vary amongst drives but there is a core set that provides a good view of the drive health.