Formatting hard drive

[wseyller]

I have a 500GB ata 100 seagate drive inside an enclosure using usb 2.0 port. I am using the disk management in vista to format this new drive as NTFS. It has been about 3 hours so far and it is at 28% finished. Is this normal. I know this drive is much bigger than any other I have owned before but come on.

 

[Blain]

Big drives take longer, and even more so if doing a format in an external enclosure @ USB 2.

 

[MegaVovaN]

Did you do "quick format" ?
If doing full format, this is expected. It's a large drive, damn!

Dunno if USB has anything to do with slowness.

 

[wseyller]

can I just do a quick format with fresh drive.


still though if it goes the same speed throughout it will take about 9 or 10 hours!!

 

[Blain]

You need a good app like Partition Magic, that handles your formats FAST. :laugh:

 

[wseyller]

I canceled the formatting and I then tried quick format. It took literally 2 seconds. Everything seems ok I guess.

 

[MegaVovaN]

Yeah, you can do quick format next time.


AFAIK, quick format just writes blank tables in beginning of drive, where as normal (full) format not only writes blank tables, but also filles entire disk with 0's

 

[betasub]

Manufacturer's disk tools FTW!

 

[BakaTsuchiro]

Originally posted by: betasub
Manufacturer's disk tools FTW!

Yes!!! takes like 10sec to format a 500gb hdd with them