Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

Help! Corrupted File System won't let me format the disk in a timely manner!

Tags:
  • File System
  • Format
  • Storage
  • Seagate
Last response: in Storage
Share
October 2, 2014 12:02:04 PM

Hey everyone -

I've got a Drobo 800i that's managed to fry the file system on the 8 drives that occupy it. It's a RAID array, using the Drobo native "BeyondRAID" feature. We use SeaGate Barracuda drives (3tb each). I don't care about the data on them and I need a way to **quickly** wipe out the drives so we can get them back into circulation. I've already downloaded SeaTools for Windows and DOS, but they're both painfully slow. Based on the rate that it's currently going - it will take 6 or more hours per drive and I've only got my laptop to run it from. At this rate, I'll be doing this particular task for over a week. I simply don't have that kind of time.

So I'm here to ask - what's the fastest way to get these things wiped out and usable again?

I'm not against using a linux release of something, and I've tried some linux drive recovery tools and tricks already, but they're pretty slow. If I were to rate myself on a user experience level on a 1 to 10 scale (1 being my 85-year old Grandma who doesn't even use email and 10 being "Techno-Guru"), I'd put myself around a 7 to 7.5. I hope this helps you gauge what I can handle.

Thanks for your time!

More about : corrupted file system format disk timely manner

a b G Storage
October 2, 2014 12:24:31 PM

Put them in a working system then format them. Then try again
m
0
l
October 2, 2014 12:47:47 PM

Paul NZ said:
Put them in a working system then format them. Then try again


I did that already. The disks can't initialize thanks to the corruption, so they won't get assigned a drive letter and Disk Manager in Windows can't interact with the drive (complains that the Disk is not Ready). I've gone into DISKPART to try the same thing and ended up with the same results. In Linux, fsck just craps out throwing "fsck failed - please repair manually and reboot".

SeaTools is working, but painfully slow. Any other ideas?
m
0
l
Related resources
a b G Storage
October 2, 2014 12:52:11 PM

What model are the hdd's?? Are they all the same model?
m
0
l
October 2, 2014 12:55:03 PM

Paul NZ said:
What model are the hdd's?? Are they all the same model?


Yes, all 8 of the drives are the same model.

Model# is ST3000DM001
m
0
l
a b G Storage
October 2, 2014 12:55:49 PM

And whats the model? Wouldnt be surprised if it's some kind of firmware bug, or if these hdds have this bsy bug.

Which is similar to what earlier seagate hdds had.

m
0
l
October 2, 2014 12:56:32 PM

Paul NZ said:
And whats the model?


Model# is ST3000DM001
m
0
l
a b G Storage
October 2, 2014 1:02:25 PM

Thats not the easiest hdd to format.

A search in here and Google. People couldnt even install Windows on that hdd. Let alone try and format it on another system

Try what it says here. It needs to be formatted in GPT

As it says above it can be tricky to install anything on it :lol:  thats an understatement. Obviously they didn't read what people say about it in Google. It was impossible to install anything on it (thats probably why their system didnt support UEFI)

Partitioning and formatting

The easiest way to use the 3TB Barracuda drive is as a secondary drive on your Windows 7-based desktop (32-bit or 64-bit). After plugging it in to one of your SATA ports and powering up, you'll need to activate the disk through Windows' Disk Manager.

Unlike most of today's drives, the 3TB Barracuda won't give you the full benefits of its total capacity unless you choose GPT (GUID Partition Table) as its partition type -- it won't work properly if you choose MBR. Choosing MBR will restrict you to only 2.1TB of the drive's capacity and leave 746GB of space unusable. When you select GPT, the entire partition, all 2.72TB of usable space, will be available for formatting.

If you plan to use the 3TB Barracuda as a boot drive, then you won't be able to use all of its 3TB capacity unless your motherboard has a UEFI BIOS and can use GBT partitions. We installed the 3TB Barracuda as a boot drive on our Intel-based ASUS P7P55DE Premium motherboard.

The drive was detected without any problems and Windows proceeded to install on it, but only 1.99TB of space was usable on the disk. Because MBR was used as the partition type, 746MB of space went unusable, and because the drive was already using MBR as the partition type, we could not convert the drive to GPT in order to format the remaining space.

Does this system or the one you tried support UEFI??
m
0
l
October 3, 2014 8:05:11 AM

Thanks for the response, but since I wasn't able initialize the drive through Disk Management, I couldn't format the drive using the method you prescribed. Still got those "Disk not Ready" errors from DM.

I couldn't sleep over this issue, so I sat up and messed around with it.

Loaded it into a linux box (via CloneZilla command line) -
The linux box wasn't seeing a file system at all. I was able to get some form of interaction through mkfs (ran: "mkfs --type ext3 /dev/sdf" and just told it to apply the change to the whole drive). It immediately started responding and I was able to mount the drive as /mnt/sdf1.

After that - I was able to get the drive to initialize in Windows. Now all I have to do is figure out why only 750GB of the drive storage is showing instead of 3tb, but I'm pretty sure it's something to do with the partition tables. I'm going to stuff it back into the linux box and mess around with it.

Thanks for the help! Any ideas where to start on the drive size strangeness?
m
0
l
a b G Storage
October 3, 2014 1:41:14 PM

Its because theyre 3 TB. I would say they'll have to be formatted in GPT and the system would have to support UEFI to see the partitions
m
0
l
a c 253 G Storage
October 3, 2014 3:48:55 PM

Paul NZ said:
Its because theyre 3 TB. I would say they'll have to be formatted in GPT and the system would have to support UEFI to see the partitions


To whom are you addressing your response? The 3 TB drive size has been stated in the OP and in my recommended solution.

Yogi

m
0
l
a b G Storage
October 3, 2014 4:37:42 PM

Whoever
m
0
l
October 13, 2014 1:12:19 PM

Thanks for the help everyone, the drive issue is completely resolved now.

After I did the linux mount and mkfs change i mentioned below, I slapped it and the other drives back into the Drobo Pro and just formatted them after doing the same change of each of the drives. After this, all of the drives spun up correctly and showed the right drive size.

Thanks for all your help!
m
0
l
!