Formatting SSD drive

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I have a 8 TB solid state drive.

When I use the quick format option it formats in seconds.

Unchecking the quick format button and it has been running for 36 hours is appears to be only about 60% complete.

What is happening?

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If it is an external drive connected to a USB 2.0 port I think that could explain it. USB 2 is slow when dealing with huge sizes.

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You’ll be a few days for sure doing a full format of 8TB – usb or not.

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More than likely, the SSD will get very warm and probably throttle itself thus slowing things down even more. The number of sectors on an 8 TB drive must be enormous and therefor the number of (small) writes to format the drive would be as well. Something that SSDs aren’t particularly good at.

I think that you have no choice but to wait it out.

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A full format does a sector-by-sector check and insures that every sector that is known good is usable and every sector that is known bad will be flagged as bad and never be used.

I always use a full format, regardless of drive type.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

2 users thanked author for this post.

diktater, klang

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Out of the 50 or so hard drives and SSDs I have, only two are 4TB in size. The rest are 3TB or smaller. For technical reasons, I never use drives larger than 2TB in my drive arrays.

I have to ask, have you ever formatted something as large as 8TB? If so, spinning rust or solid state and how long did it take? As weird as this sounds, I never thought about this until now. How long would it take to format a 16TB spinner?

Remember the days when we had to use edlin and debug to set up a drive? And waiting for the low level format of SCSI drives to finish?

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My DIY NAS has four 4TB HDD drives plus a spare.  I did a full format on all five.  Yes, it does indeed take a good while to format large drives, but it only needs to be done once.

On the other hand, I’ve never formatted a drive not directly installed in my machine.  Evidently the OP is connected via USB.  As I recall, formatting a 4TB HDD was close to three hours, but I didn’t time it.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Modern hard disks (all hard disks in PCs / Macs in use today) are self checking and correcting. There is never any need to perform a full format on them.
Use the time to install your software and then back it up.

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

Modern hard disks (all hard disks in PCs / Macs in use today) are self checking and correcting. There is never any need to perform a full format on them. Use the time to install your software and then back it up.

I had a “modern hard disk” that was dead on arrival; got an RTM from the manufacturer and a new “modern hard disk” to replace it.  The replacement got a full format.  We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do. We don’t all have to do the same things.

A full format is time consuming, yes, but it only needs to be done once, and it does no harm.  What it does is flag any bad sectors so that they will never be used to store one’s data.  For me, that’s a good thing.  I will always have time for a full format, regardless of the size of the new HDD/SSD, because there are some things of which I want to be certain.

I will never advise anyone to use quick format on a new HDD/SSD.  A full format provides a certainty that does not come in the box with the new HDD/SSD, regardless of the manufacturer’s reputation.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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DOA is not “I have a few suspect sectors”.
The point of ECC is the manufacturers know they are pushing the limits of the technology and build in safeguards to protect your data.

Running a full format does not guarantee the disk will not develop more bad sectors, so you could argue that you have wasted your time running it at all.

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

DOA is not “I have a few suspect sectors”.

No, it is clear evidence that if a DOA HDD can get through the manufacturer’s QC, then other, lesser issues can, as well.

Paul T wrote:

Modern hard disks (all hard disks in PCs / Macs in use today) are self checking and correcting.

This is ensconced in and controlled by firmware.  Firmware can fail, as we all very well know.  The self-checking and correcting can cease without any warning or indication to either the OS or the user.

I don’t pay any attention to SMART data.  I don’t use Google, but Google uses a lot of drives.  In a study of consumer-grade disk drives (pdf) published in 2007, Google found S.M.A.R.T data not so reliable a predictor of drive failure.  In 2007, at least, SMART data was equivalent to a coin flip for predicting failure.

Paul T wrote:

The point of ECC is the manufacturers know they are pushing the limits of the technology and build in safeguards to protect your data.

My point is that those safeguards that are pushing the limits of the technology are subject to failure.  How many times have you advised a member to run chkdsk on a questionable drive?

Paul T wrote:

Running a full format does not guarantee the disk will not develop more bad sectors, so you could argue that you have wasted your time running it at all.

What it guarantees is that any existing bad sectors are flagged as bad during a full format, and will never be used to hold my data.  I create drive images at least weekly, sometimes more often, with Image for Windows.  If my drive does develop bad sectors, Image for Windows will abort if it encounters bad sectors.  I can then run chkdsk /r, with will attempt to recover any data in bad sectors and flag those sectors as bad.

bbearren wrote:

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do. We don’t all have to do the same things.

You do you, I’ll do me.  If a member chooses to use their own time to run a full format, it’s their time to use as they see fit, is it not?  If a member chooses to save time and run a quick format, it’s their time to save as they see fit, is it not?

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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The full formatting completed in approximately 45 hours.  Yes it is connected via USB2.

Task Manager showed the disk operating at a consistent 99% and showing a disk transfer rate of approximately 4 MB/second.

When I first got the drive I was writing data to it to back up data that was stored on another external drive and I began getting consistent data errors.  While I was getting errors from the SSD I could manually access the data from the source drive.  That being the case I featured that something was suspect in the SSD and featured I had nothing to lose by doing a complete long form formatting.

 

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If you are using the SSD with a desktop computer, adding a USB 3 controller card would make it more fun.  (Around $20)  Backups of 100gb system partition with USB 3 could take less than 20 minutes.  It can also be possible to add USB 3 to some laptops.  Note that connecting a USB 3 hub to a USB 2 port does not give USB 3 or any increase in speed.

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Ouch … That hurt – I missed that you were using USB2 which amplified the time required.

For future reference, SSDs have no moving parts and do not degrade like the spinning platters of HDDs (as being discussed above). When formatting a mechanical drive, the OS will retry each sector up to 23 times before mapping the sector as bad. Obviously, this has no meaning with a solid state device.

The flash memory of an SSD does wear out in the sense that it has a finite number of read/write/erase cycles (usually expressed as TBW in mfg ads), but the controller manages this and will mark cells/blocks as read-only.

Of course, data loss and corruption can occur, but a full format on an SSD isn’t the right tool. There’s no “rust” that can be marginal. That said, an SSD does degrade over time – bit errors increase and reliable data retention decreases.

As consumers, we don’t have a lot of SSD tools to work with. SMART data can provide clues, but really can’t tell us much about data integrity.

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After the long form formatting of the drive – I started writing data to it again AFTER running the Error Check routine and getting the report that there were no errors.

After writing several hundred MB of data I started getting Errors – something about Semaphore not working

As of right now I will have to treat the SSD as a piece of junk.

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You didn’t mention the make/model number, or where you got it or how much you paid. Are you sure it’s a bona fide 8TB SSD?

Legit 8TB SSDs are incredibly expensive — pushing close to USD $1000, but there are a lot of fakes out there for much less, such as this one.

There’s a thread in another forum about someone who got suckered into buying a fake 8TB SSD. His was partitioned into four 2TB partitions but it doesn’t sound like yours was, so it doesn’t sound like the same thing. Nevertheless, given the stratospheric price of these things, it’s probably worth asking the question.

 

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There is no marking on the unit to identify manufacturer or model number.

Think I spent about $40 or $50 for it in about September 2021 and the unit was delivered in USPS sometime during January or February – it was in the mail that my neighbor collected for me as I was snowbirding in Florida during that period of time.

 

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$50 for an 8TB SSD. Too good to be true?

Throw it away and consider this an expensive lesson.

cheers, Paul

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bbearren wrote:

The self-checking and correcting can cease without any warning or indication to either the OS or the user

You have evidence of this?
You rely on the internal ECC to return your data reliably. If ECC ceases without warning, how can you trust your data? Do you even test for sector failure in existing data?

bbearren wrote:

How many times have you advised a member to run chkdsk on a questionable drive?

CHKDSK is a logical test of your disk data. It’s to correct data corruption caused by any sort of glitch, not test/recover bad sectors.

cheers, Paul

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bbearren wrote:

You do you, I’ll do me.

But since you asked,

bbearren wrote:

The self-checking and correcting can cease without any warning or indication to either the OS or the user.

Paul T wrote:

You have evidence of this?

bbearren wrote:

I create drive images at least weekly, sometimes more often, with Image for Windows. If my drive does develop bad sectors, Image for Windows will abort if it encounters bad sectors. I can then run chkdsk /r, with will attempt to recover any data in bad sectors and flag those sectors as bad.

Which is evidence that ECC failed, otherwise there would have been no abort of Image for Windows.  It’s really quite straightforward.

I also have evidence of failed drives over the years, including one failure that was in the PCB itself (where all that ECC stuff is housed in firmware) that was fatal to the extent the PC would not even POST.  After eliminating other possibilities, I began disconnecting drives one by one.  When I had disconnected the failed drive, the PC booted into Windows.  To confirm, I reconnected the drive and again, no POST.

I replaced the drive and restored drive images.  Everything was retrieved and the failed drive was trashed.

Paul T wrote:

You rely on the internal ECC to return your data reliably. If ECC ceases without warning, how can you trust your data? Do you even test for sector failure in existing data?

Indeed.

bbearren wrote:

I create drive images at least weekly, sometimes more often, with Image for Windows. If my drive does develop bad sectors, Image for Windows will abort if it encounters bad sectors. I can then run chkdsk /r, with will attempt to recover any data in bad sectors and flag those sectors as bad.

Paul T wrote:

CHKDSK is a logical test of your disk data. It’s to correct data corruption caused by any sort of glitch, not test/recover bad sectors.

You are incorrect; chkdsk is capable of much more.  Open a Command Prompt, type chkdsk /? and hit enter.  Here are switches pertinent to this discussion:

Chkdsk does indeed test for bad sectors and recover (where possible) data in bad sectors.

I use what works.  The advice I offer here on AskWoody is based solely on tried-and-true methods that I have used and continue to use.  I use full format on new HDD/SSD because that is my preference, and I offer that advise as personal preference.

bbearren wrote:

A full format does a sector-by-sector check and insures that every sector that is known good is usable and every sector that is known bad will be flagged as bad and never be used. I always use a full format, regardless of drive type.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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