Programming, Software, Ticker

Please note that all situations are different and i can not guarantee effectivity of this solution.

Are you in a situation where you think you have unsavorably fucked up your new HDD?  Especially after cancelling a long formatting process? Well, it might not be fucked up after all. The problem on my side that i was curious about the write-LED permanently shining on my SeaGate Barracuda 4TB, which led me to try various formatting processes to somehow “reset” the drive in case it has some kind of dubious error. Since it is a 4TB drive, it takes a really long time to wait for a long format to finish, and i felt a mix of it not being necessary and not having the time for that. So i ran a few chkdsk operation which i aborted – a long Windows format process, which i aborted – and a SeaTools “Long Sanitize Overwrite” – which i aborted. After that, the hard drive was rendered unusable.

Please note that my system is Windows 7.

Errors like:

CMD

DISKPART> create partition primary

Error in DiskPart: The request could not be completed because of an I/O device error.

In German:

DISKPART> create partition primary

Fehler in DiskPart: Die Anforderung konnte wegen eines E/A-Gerätefehlers nicht ausgeführt werden.

… appeared, and i wasn’t able to use even the most basic formatting, partitioning, or volume functions – nowhere. Even HDTune crashed. I read multiple forum threads in the internet where all threads basically ended with “The HDD is dead”. With a dark cloud over my head i thought “now that was the waste of time and money i needed”…. i just received the HDD yesterday.

My unexpected solution

After trying multiple tools like MiniTools, TestDisk, HDTune and all the good CMD line methods, i kept my ass still once more and opened the Disk Managemement window, where usually the above error occurred when initializing the disk.

From my standpoint, the disk was listed in general, but i could not assign any letter to it nor do anything else other than click “Offline”.

The exact steps:

  1. I turned the disk on and off multiple times physically, to see if anything happens… nothing happened.
  2. I clicked Action -> Rescan DIsks probably 2-3 times.
  3. I right-clicked the disk’s left column and clicked “Offline“.
  4. I right-clicked the disks left column and clicked “Online“.
  5. I ran the commands:
diskpart

list disk

select disk 1

convert gpt

Then, a success message appeared that the drive was converted.

If my memory serves correct, i right-clicked the drive’s left column and selected “Initialize Disk“. The dialog window appeared, i assigned the drive letter to it, and there it went. Without that I/O error the dialog window successfully closed and the drive suddenly popped up in Computer, showing its free space.

At this point i can run sector correction (chkdsk /f /r) and try to straighten out any bumps

I hope this solution works for you. I don’t think it’s safe to use the disk without doing a fully fledged sector repair and correction process, but returning the drive is much more acceptable now since the warranty won’t cover our own mishaps. And i’m glad(der) that my only problem here is now the permanently glowing write light…

by:
cancel formatting