Windows 7: Hard Drive Won't Format after Improper Shutdown.

It's not what you think based on the title.

(Running Windows 7 Home Premium)

I was in the middle of doing a full format of a new 1TB HDD using a SATA to USB adapter, when I stupidly hit he sleep button half way through.

I have tried everything to get the HDD to format since then and I just get errors.
I tried Wiping the drive with Active Kill Disk, but it just hangs up in the middle.
I re-initialized the drive. No change.
Used disk manager, didn't work.
I haven't been able to find a solution thru Google.

I don't know if this is meaningful info, but out of desperation, I tried cloning the drive which usually overwrites anything. The cloning software told me it could not start the clone since the "block sizes are different". The source HDD is 953,870MB and the messed up destination HDD is 953,877MB (7MB more). I checked every 1TB HDD I have, and they are all 953,870MB.

So that's the background. I have 2 questions:

1) Did I damage the HDD?



2) If not, is there something I haven't tried to get it operating properly?

Thanks very much. (sorry for the long post)

Hi Mitch,

Lets try wiping using the CLEAN command. See below:

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Regards,
Golden

Try changing the format, maybe from NTFS to exFAT, before initiating the formatting.

Thank you both. I'll try these.

I wasn't aware of the Clean All command in Windows 7. Good to know.

Golden. After running Diskpart for about an hour, I got the following error message:

"Diskpart has encountered an error: The semaphore timeout period has expired."

I have no idea what this means. Your thoughts please?


LuckyRick: exFAT didn't work either.


Is my HDD shot?


PS: Just ran a Disk Check. No problems found. Now I'm really confused.

What make of HDD is this?

Hitachi

Grab the HDD diagnostic tool here (the CD version), and test the HDD:
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.

Thank you! Can I diagnose a HDD connected thru a USB port?

Sorry for the late reply - I'm unsure about connection via USB. Give it a try.