Hi, I want to use my WD Elements 2 TB external hard drive as a back up for my NAS unit.
I used the WD drive totally normally, without any problems until I tried to format it.
I started a format (not quick format) on my Win 8 device, and after about 18 hours, it seemed to have finished, but I got the message that Windows cannot complete the format.
It is visible in the Windows Explorer, but has no name, and no volume size. Whenever I try to do something with it, Windows says it needs to format it first, and fails every time.
After that I tried formatting it on a Windows XP machine, and a Windows 7 machine, both to no avail. Can anyone helpe me out here? Thanks in advace.
Hello mate,
Check the drive on disk management, if the drive is showing with a black bar next to it, try making a right click on the unit and create a new volume on the unit.
Please let us know what happens.
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Hello,
thanks for your suggestion, but there is no black bar, just the standard dark blue. The drive is listed as being in RAW file system format - never seen that before…
Once again, I tried the format, and got the same message:
I’ve got the feeling this drive it totally dead. 
Hi,
Can you please try to format the drive using the DLG tool. You will see an option to write zeros to the drive.
Check the link below for more information about the DLG tool.
How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows
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Once again, thank you for your continued support in helping me.
I did as you suggested, and have now discovered the next stumbling block. I received this error message while doing the full erase mode.
holzlondon wrote:
Hi, I want to use my WD Elements 2 TB external hard drive as a back up for my NAS unit.
I used the WD drive totally normally, without any problems until I tried to format it.
I started a format (not quick format) on my Win 8 device, and after about 18 hours, it seemed to have finished, but I got the message that Windows cannot complete the format.
It is visible in the Windows Explorer, but has no name, and no volume size. Whenever I try to do something with it, Windows says it needs to format it first, and fails every time.
After that I tried formatting it on a Windows XP machine, and a Windows 7 machine, both to no avail. Can anyone helpe me out here? Thanks in advace.
I think the drive may have bad sectors. First, it’s not normal for a 2TB drive to take that long, so as noted above zero out the unit at a low level, and run a full test (Which I think it will fail), and then replace it.
