# Solved: How Does Long Does It Take To Initialize New Hard Drive



## StringJunky (May 15, 2009)

I've just put together an external hard drive and I'm in the process of initializing it...How long does it take as there is no indication as to its progress only that the activity light on the external hard drive keeps flashing as hard drives do when they are busy?

I have a Presario CQ60 212EM...2.1ghz Sempron, 2gb RAM running Vista Basic. The HD enclosure is an Integral P2NES 2.5inch eSATA/USB2.0 unit fitted with a 250gb Hitachi Travelstar, 2.5inch, 5400rpm HD...it is initializing in USB mode. It has been running for about 2 hours...will the light stop flashing rapidly when it is finished?

I started the initialization process in Computer Management. Looking in the 'properties' tab of that disk it says 'Partition Style' is Master Boot Record which is what I had selected....does this mean it's done?

Is this initialization process another word for format which I'm familiar with?

Thanks


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## chrome57 (Apr 10, 2008)

It should be NTFS. partition style Basic. Yes Initializing is Formatting and drive registration. The MBR should be on C the boot drive surely.


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## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

Initialization is not part of formatting though formatting could be seen as part of the initialization process. It should only take a second or two if basic disk is chosen and then its ready to be partitioned and formatted. Vista does some strange, time-consuming things with externals sometimes though so I wouldn't be able to say for sure if it was a glitch, hardware problem or a "feature."

Only a full format would take more time normally though and with Vista it could easily take 6 hours or more to format 250 gigs and the Microsoft workaround tech article on that says to only do a quick format; but we're not even sure its formatting. Usually the hard drive light stays lit solid or flickers just slightly from solid when formattting.


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## StringJunky (May 15, 2009)

Thanks for replying, Fairnooks. What I thought would be a fairly simple operation has turned into a brain-frying. possibly expensive, learning curve for me. Ive never done a hard drive from scratch. As of this moment I have a drive that is no longer seen in Computer Management but was before. My overall thoughts now after trying everything I know is that one of the two components is faulty but don't how to eliminate the faulty one.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled the drive. I've reassembled the HD and Enclosure to make sure they are mated properly. The only thing left to do I can think of apart from sending them back is trying to do it on another Vista Computer. Will a USB connected external SATA drive be recognized by an XP computer..I have one and this doesn't work either...that one is a Toshiba M40 (6 years old)?

On my Vista Machine during the initialization process it stopped and said 'the request cannot be performed because of an I/O error'.

Chrome's comment that the choice should be something like NTFS not MBR for formatting is right but the choices I had was MBR or GUID...this was in the Simple Volume Wizard..strange I thought, but chose MBR. GUID is for volumes greater than 2T apparently. I attempted the format before the initialization which I now know is wrong.

I've also run it from one USB port and two USB ports as suggested in the HD enclosure manua to power it. The input voltage says 5v on the HD Enclosure power socket.

Your comments on how to move forward from here would be greatly appreciated...I'm out of ideas!


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## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

There's a hotifx for this problem but I think that only applies to Server 2003 disk initialization.

My next step would be to take the drive out of the enclosure and hook it up with a spare power and data cable in a desktop, being sure that the SATA controller I used was enabled in the BIOS, and see what there is to see there.


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## StringJunky (May 15, 2009)

HI Fairnooks

Thanks for replying. After leaving it alone for a while to refresh my addled brain I started from scratch again:

I managed to initialize the drive but in GPT not MBR which is what it should be..GPT only works in 64bit systems so at present it's unusable in my 32bit system. Disk Management says I have a Basic NTFS volume.....

Just this moment I went into Disk Management to get some details for this post and Lo and Behold...*everything works!*...it is all there as it should be!

Somehow, it has converted it self from a GPT volume to an MBR Basic Volume formatted in NTFS. I've just successfully transferred a file to it like any other drive!

Where I've ditto ed the paragraph above I was going to ask how do I convert a disk initialized in GPT to MBR but now it's not necessary.

As you said in your earlier post Fairnooks, Vista is a strange beast and does strange things...you are not kidding!

Do you have any idea how Vista has done this without any intervention from me..as far as I know there isn't any software preinstalled in the hardware? They are just a basic Ext. Akasa HD enclosure and raw Hitachi HD.

It seems as though 32bit Vista has recognized I had a 64bit GPT drive; couldn't work with it, so it converted it to 32bit MBR!

Wonders never cease.

Do you think there _is_ initializing software embedded in the HD enlosure mainboard and somehow it has overwritten my original initializing actions when I plugged it in a gain?

I can get back to my _real_ task of creating a decent backup program!

Thanks for your interest. :up:


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## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

> Do you think there is initializing software embedded in the HD enlosure mainboard and somehow it has overwritten my original initializing actions when I plugged it in a gain?


It can easily do something like that, but if it should be doing something like that without prompting you first? One concession is that Vista is better at diagnostic stuff like this than previous versions of Windows, but as to what exactly is going (or went on), I'm not sure.


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## StringJunky (May 15, 2009)

fairnooks said:


> One concession is that Vista is better at diagnostic stuff like this than previous versions of Windows, but as to what exactly is going (or went on), I'm not sure.


I'm glad I did it on Vista and not Xp because I'm sure the problem would have been prolonged further with XP. I have both OS's but prefer Vista even though it is more resource-hungry. It does more, looks nicer and I haven't sensed or experienced any freezes, bsod or any major glitches...stability-wise I think it kicks Xp into the weeds!

In time, after generally playing and experimenting with my new ext.HD and reading around , I'm sure I'll understand what happened today.

Quote from another forum member.._"the first sign of insanity is when you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result"..._this is what happened to me today and yesterday with this exercise..until I took 'time out'!

Cheers


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