Solved Diskpart hangs running 'clean all'

[abandonhope]

Following the tutorial on here I'm running diskpart command clean all on a 500gb HDD but I started it at 17.00 yesterday and it's now 09.15 today and the curser is still blinking.
Surely it should have completed by now?
What should I do?

thanks

 

[Dwarf]

Give it more time. The clean all command can take a considerable time to complete, for example on an 8GB USB stick it takes about 25 or so minutes on my system.

 

[Roderunner]

Was the disk you want to 'Clean All' selected before entering the command ?

 

[abandonhope]

Yes I selected the correct drive, i followed exactly the guide to diskpart these forums and there is no other program running.
nearly 17hrs now :huh:

 

[Dwarf]

Doing a quick calculation, based on my 8GB example above (~16GB/hr), you have ~14hrs to go.

 

[gregrocker]

Takes normally one hour per 320gb.

Why are you running Clean All? It's only practical purpose is to make data unrecoverable by most recovery methods. For preparing a HD best, you only need to Delete all partitions during install and Create/Format new. New data doesn't care if it's overwriting 0's, 1's or both.

Only with Install problems or a rare case where bad code is blocking startup or BIOS POST is it necessary to use Diskpart Clean Command to zero the boot sector.

 

[Dwarf]

The speed also depends on the interface. A disk, connected internally via the onboard SATA/PATA, is always going to perform faster than the same disk connected via a USB/Firewire interface. Given the amount of time that has elapsed, I would suspect the latter.

 

[karlsnooks]

Following the tutorial on here I'm running diskpart command clean all on a 500gb HDD but I started it at 17.00 yesterday and it's now 09.15 today and the curser is still blinking.
Surely it should have completed by now?
What should I do?

thanks

The amount of time that you have quoted is very unusual.

Under the circumstances, I suggest:
Use Ctrl+C to terminate the command.

Try running again, but this time only use CLEAN without the ALL.

This will overwrite the boot area with zeros, thus eliminating malware from the boot sector and also making the disk appear as one large disk with no partitions or volumes defined.

If you are giving the computer or the disk to someone else, then a writing of zeroes to each and every byte is a good idea. A format does NOT write over the existing data and the data can be recovered.

Is this a USB disk? If not, then how many disks are connected? For what purpose will you be using the disk after the disk is cleaned?

 

[abandonhope]

Thanks everyone, it is an internal SATA 2 HDD, I wanted to clean it to pass it on but given the amount of time IT'S STILL RUNNING (16.58)! I guess something is wrong.
I shall use the Ctrl+ C command & try CLEAN & report back

 

[gregrocker]

To be sure it's worth passing on I'd run maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan, followed by Disk Check after creating one large partition to check. You can do the latter two with free Partition Wizard

 

[abandonhope]

Thank you very much for all the help and advice, I'm pleased to say following the advice it's now solved and the disk checks out fine.
I've no idea why it froze or whatever but its now clean re-formatted and seems to be working OK

 

[donamor]

hi, i'm having the same issue with a larger drive- a 2tb g-drive- i'm using windows and i read from their site that this drive comes pre-formatted for macs.. so i followed the directions on selecting the drive and running diskpart/clean all. it is now about 20hours and it is not done.. should i also kill this and only do clean? i already see the drive on the Disk Management area showing all space unallocated- tried to initialize but it says it is being cleaned- even after I ended the Command from the task manager. Any sugestions? This is just an external drive on firewire and it is brand new.. now I'm wondering if i really had to do all this.- Now i can't even see the command window- thanks

 

[gregrocker]

There is no reason to run Clean All except making data unrecoverable by most methods. Any other reason like writing zeroes to the boot sector to overwrite bad or conflicting code can be accomplished by the Clean command. Reboot the computer and run Diskpart Clean Command .

Make sure you have the latest BIOS update as this is sometimes required to handle drives that large.

If you plan to install to the drive, unplug all others and use the booted installer Custom>Drive options to partition and format: Clean Install Windows 7

Otherwise partition in Disk mgmt. That may have been all you needed in the first place - to delete, Create and Format in Disk Mgmt. Partition or Volume - Create New. The Clean commands really are only needed for troubleshooting purposes otherwise.

 

[vinna]

Hi guys, I have a similar issue unsolved. Please help!

My 128 GB micro sdXC memory card corrupted while I was copying files into it. It asks to format before I can use it. I tried to recover data from many tools but couldn't retrieve them back and I tried to diskpart Clean this disk. According to the stats above, it should finish till now but it's been 2 days and Clean is still running.

In Disk Management and in diskpart list - my 128 GB memory card is shown as 12 MB I don't know why.

Please suggest what to do to get back the card running.

Thanks
Vinna

 

[timtak]

How does one know if "clean all" has hung that or is still trundling along?

My old phone overheated and shut down part way through recording a video and this did bad things to the SD card. There is a "temp video" file that is corrupted. diskmgmt.msc and diskpart give the disk a number but my win7 does not give the card a drive letter, and when I attempt to format using diskpart, diskmgmt.msc, and the SD association's formatter I am told that the disk does not exist, and my phone can access files prior to the crash but can not format nor save new files (e.g. photos). So I thought I would clean all but perhaps nothing is happening. The cursor is flashing. It is a 64GB USB drive.


This thread is near the top of the Google search for "clean all" diskpart so it is still a relevant/important repository of information (that told me for instance that it could take a very long time) these four years later.

 

[timtak]

I stopped "clean all", and am using a free utility for creating bootable drives called "RMPrepUSB" (with the non-bootable option selected) from "RM Education". This utility also failed to format my disk, either to NTFS or exFat (current formatting) complaining that it did not have a drive letter. I am now checking it using the "Quick Size Test" of the same utility, which will takes about 10 minutes.


And it turns out that my "64GB" SD Card, is a fake containing only 4 or 8GB. I had been using it for years without noticing but had gone over the real limit and it corrupted itself. I think I will buy a new non-fake card.


RM Education has quite a detailed page bout fake cards/memory drives
07 - All about 'Fake' SD cards and USB Flash drives - RMPrepUSB