Formatting the hard drive

I have about 800 gig of music on the server, and due to problems getting the WD Live Hub to “see” the music I tried simply copying the music to the hubs internal 1tb drive…this failed, twice.

I am now formatting the internal drive  - its been formatting for 24 hrs, which seems like an awfully long time…

How long does it take to format the internal 1tb drive?

I think you have faulty HDD.

You should contact RMA service.

I repartitioned and formatted my 2-year old Hub’s hard drive the other day.

This is how I did it. Some stuff might not be needed but I wanted to KNOW what would happen…

Backup any themes or other stuff you want to keep!!! You can do this before you take the drive out of the Hub or after you connect it to your PC!

1) Remove the drive from the Hub

2) Connect the drive to a USB adapter. When you connect it it will auto run and may ask you to scan it for errors don’t bother scanning it as you’re about to erase all of it.

3) Connect the USB adapter to your PC

4) Open the Windowz Disk Management (how ever you want to)

      I just type “create and format” into the search box on the start button in Win 7 and hit enter

5) Find the Hubs drive in the list of drives (It will be a USB drive) and make SURE it is the Hub’s drive!

6) The Hub’s hard drive has 3 partitions. It should be represented at the bottom portion of the Disk Manager Window along with ALL your other drives so make SURE you are selecting the correct drive or you will destroy your Windows OS by doing what you are about to do. (It WILL NOT BE The C drive or Disk 0 don’t even think about that one as it most likely has Windows on it)

7) Right click on one of the indicated partitions for the Hub’s drive. From the list that opens click “delete volume”. Do this for the two remaining partitions as well. This REMOVES ALL DATA ON THE HUB’S HARD DISK!!!

8) When you’re done deleting all 3 partitions, remove the drive from the PC and place it back into the Hub. No need to re-partition it!

9) Connect the Hub in the usual way to your system and network and fire it up. It will eventually ask to be formatted at boot.

10) Allow the Hub to format it - It’ll put back all 3 partitions, format them, and put the system files it needs back, and nothing more, and will end up on the home screen in the default theme.

11) Copy your stuff back to it and have fun!

Once the Hub is powered up with the unformatted/unpartitioned drive in it and you answer yes to format it it doesn’t take it very long to actually do it. Seems to me it was about 60 seconds. It takes longer to boot it to the point of asking to be formatted…that’s the scary part, that wait. :slight_smile:

1 Like

would it not be easier to just plug it in open windows explorer right click on the drive choose format

I believe that for it to work correctly the hub has to format it.

Hub makes some kind of 3 partition NTFS system,

If you still have warranty, contact RMA service.

fender62 wrote:

would it not be easier to just plug it in open windows explorer right click on the drive choose format

Yes, if all you wanted was a format. My info was for deleting the partitions. When that’s done it’s as if it were a new drive. Nothing would be on it. ( yeah I know it’s not completely clean but it’s as close as you’ll get without additional software)

The Hub establishes all 3 partitions as they should be and it formats and restores the factory data that needs to be on one of them. It did NOT factory restore ANY of the settings other than the theme of course.

I would NOT do this if your Hub is still in warranty as opening the case will void it As I said mine is 2+ years old.

Question: 

So you say to format a drive containing partitions (you want to keep), you don’t use the Format command, you delete the Volume for each partition, and that does it?  Interesting.  Did not know that.

mike27oct wrote:

Question: 

So you say to format a drive containing partitions (you want to keep), you don’t use the Format command, you delete the Volume for each partition, and that does it?  Interesting.  Did not know that.

You talkin’ to me? :wink:

I edited the first line in my post to reflect “repartitioning” the drive as well.

I wasn’t trying keep anything that was on the drive. You can’t format a hard drive until there is a partition to format, AFAIK. When I removed the drive from my PC and put it back in the Hub there were no partitions and so it was not formatted either. The Hub did all the partitioning and formatting as it would have done to a new drive replacement.

Boys,

you will scare CollingsBob away.

Seems to me that the best thing is to return it…and get a WD TV Live…and an external 1 or 2 Tb hard drive…

Well, I woud go for Hub

I have a new WD TV Live installed, and a 1Tb hard drive downstairs busily copying music onto itself…This looks like its going to work…