Unable To Format NTFS Partition With Allocation Unit Size Of 512B
Sep 23, 2012
This is an issue with trying to use the Windows Backup utility with an external hard drive (Seagate GoFlex Desk) with more than 2TB of storage (in this case 3TB). I have looked into this and found that this is a common problem related to the backup utility being unable to deal with drives that have a 4kb allocation unit size. The typical advice is to reformat with an allocation size of 512B, which it will be able to work with.
The problem is that Windows will not let me reformat with that size. The smallest unit it allows is 4kb, which is exactly the problem. If I initiate the format dialog on other NTFS drives I have, 512B shows up as an option. Just not on my external. And yet, this solution appears all over the place and people have claimed it solved their problem. I have even (twice) tried creating a second partition on the external (1.5TB and then 1TB), neither has allowed an allocation unit size less than 4k, even though my 1TB internal drive did allow this.
I am not really interested in third party backup or imaging programs. With my old 500GB external, I used the Windows Backup utility to make a few system images and there have been at least two situations where a bad driver or something has resulted in having to go back to a restore point, but finding no suitable ones available, and thus restoring to the backup image. This has been the simplest way of recovering from these disasters and it has worked every time. For normal file backups, I have a number of cloud storage systems and I can use the software Seagate included with the drive. However, the one and only reason I got a hard drive this large is that it would allow me to make a lot of Windows system images, and that is the one thing I am unable to do. I do not understand why I cannot use the one fix everyone online recommends. I have emailed Seagate tech support about this but they have not responded.
I am using Win 7 Pro x32 and have partitioned my hard drive into two NTFS partitions. One is for my Windows other one is for my files and personal documents.I'd like to know how to format the partitions in terms of cluster size. I read a lot of articles which didn't actually answer my question - what are the differences between formatting with a big and small cluster size, and how does all that influence the overall performance. I should also mention that I am willing to sacrifice some bits and bytes from my partitions, if needed, as long as I could somehow increase performance. Also, I noticed that the standard Windows 7's formatting dialogue allows to format a partition only with a limited size of clusters compared to trying to format a partition using software such as Acronis Disk Director or Paragon Hard Disk Manager where I was able to format with a much greater cluster size. What to do, what to do...? You could save the small talk such as - 'small cluster size wastes less disk space but works slower, and vice versa, greater cluster size wastes more space but gives better performance'.
on my netbook there is C drive which is FAT 32 and D drive which is NTFS. the thing is i have windows xp dualbooting windows xp (i know its weird). i am only using C drive so i want to format the D drive and merge it with C drive so i can have more space. the thing is it doesnt let me delete it. i tried using Easus Partition manager, but there was no delete option or anything like that. i cant use the CD because mine is a netbook. also booting from USB does not work because my computer is old and it doesnt support booting from usb in BIOS.
just got a new laptop.From thw store where he bought it,the OS of the laptop was an Ubuntu.I tried to install windows 7,but won't let me.I can't access "Format" from the installation process.Down on the windows that is opened when installing windows 7,it says "Windows 7 cannot be installed on this partition because the format is not NTFS,and is not enough space on the disk"The laptop got only 2 partitions 0 and 1,and both of them are out of free space.
I am unable to reduce the size of my OS(C) partition to desired size. I've written my recovery disks in case of any problems.
The Shrink C box shows available shrink size is 0. I understand this is because there are unmovable files in the way. One post I saw said to disable system recovery. This is a brand new machine that I want to make dual boot Windows and linux. Want only about 80GB for Windows and 300 for linux. I also saw where someone suggested to use ghost program, then wipe C drive clean and reinstall Windows OS on smaller partition. Sounds drastic.
I'm going to fix my partition set-up (for example removing the one with Vista) and would like to know how much I should allocate to the partition with 7. (At the moment it's 32 GB.)
I am going to keep my files on a different partition. But what about the "program files"? Is it "better" to have them on the same partition as windows 7 or not? How big "should" the 7 partition be?
I recently upgrade my entire computer, with it i brought a 2TB WD HDD. I set everything up, installed Windows 7 and updated all my drivers/etc.
I then moved my old 3x 1TB drives over, in it, one partition had my old Windows 7, I am unable to format/delete windows folder/program files. One HDD had my old Vista partition, same story..i can't format/delete.
What i basically want to do is, take those 3 drives, format and re-set them into 1TB 1 Parition drives. Now i have 1.6TB space left on my 2TB drive, so i can put one entire drive over and format the old, repartition to 1...
How can i get about this? I don't understand why the boot system will have problems because when i installed Windows 7 it had no other drives to see..
im having this prob where a total of 40GB of space out of 160Gb in my HD cant be formatted. I were using Windows Vista before upgrading it into Win 7....
I had 3 partitions ( c:, d:, & N... All 3 of it works perfectly. The only problem im facing here is with this 40GB of free space which i couldn't Format in anyway.. it keeps on bugging me with this warning of "not enough space to complete operation" thingy...
Here is an image of it, where the green colored free space (39.06Gb)... cant be formatted.
I tried Formatting it while the Windows 7 installation process, yet, i still couldn't do anything.
I have a second hard drive that is formatted FAT32 and I need to reformat it to NTFS so I can install Windows XP as a dual boot option. It shows 146GB of 148GB free space; however, when I open the drive it says "This folder is empty". I once had Ubuntu installed and reformatted the drive, but it may be hidden somewhere on the drive. I have tried to reformat by right clicking the drive letter and using the format command, but I get an error message "Windows cannot format this drive. Quit any disk utilities or other programs that are using this drive, and make sure no window is displaying the contents of the drive. Then try formatting again.". When I check the drive for contents using CMD it says "Volume in drive is New Volume Directory of D: File Not Found". When I try to format D: from the C: prompt, it says "Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode." I am logged on as Administrator
I have Windows 7 on my main machine and am using a spare drive right now. Power went out and when I turned my computer back on, it wouldn't start so I removed the HDD and plugged it into test computer which was when I found it had become a RAW file system.Alright, so basically I'm wondering how I should convert my RAW drive back into NTFS so I can use it again and I'm not interested in retrieving information as I had nothing of value on that drive, because all important stuff is on my storage drive - which is 1TB in size. I have tried a variety of methods including.
1. Using Disk Management, even though it recognizes it and shows it as a RAW format - I am unable to format it as it gives me a "Format could not be succesfully completed" error message, also deleting and making new partitions has no effect.
2. Tried using DOS to convert it from RAW to NTFS
3. Tried using programs like PTDD Partition Table Doctor and EASUES Partition Master to rebuild the partitions, fix the Master Boot Record and then convert to either FAT32 or NTFS (if it's FAT32 I'll convert it to NTFS afterwards)
4. Tried to format from the "My Computer" window via right-clicking and selecting "Format"
5. According to TestDisk I have 0 partitions and when I do a deep search it forks of a load of read errors. :
As far as I know, PPTD Partition Table Doctor tells me that there sector count is incorrect and that the MBR is in the the wrong section.If you want my system specifications, Here:
Windows 7 64-bit AMD Athlon X2 6400+ 3.2GH 6GB DDR2 RAM 667 BFG GTX 260 (216) OCX 1TB Green Cavier Western Digital 80GB Seagate Barracuda (Now in RAW format)
I have a new windows 7 64-bit computer and two 4-year old external Western Digital HDDs. They connect fine and transfer data okay except when i try to do a Windows system mirror.All was well with XP Pro and the same HDDs but Windows 7 tells me the HDDs are not formatted to NTFS.Firstly, what does this mean as i would really like a system mirror and secondly, is there a way round it withpout formatting the HDDs and losing all the data?
I had to use my thumb drive to upload files to a Mac, so I reformatted the drive to FAT32. Now I'm trying to get it back to NTFS so I can use again on my Win 7 machine, but the drive is not even showing up in My Computer.
The Drive shows in Device Manager and in Disk Management, but offers me no option to format.
used gparted to copy partition from windows7 laptop to usb ext HD as ntfs partition. iam am able to view files and evrything ok. when i reboot into win7 it sees partition as RAW. its says i need to format it.
I had a Windows 7 installation, x64 and recently I installed windows XP, quit Windows 7 for a while. I have a big problem, I have a 160GB SATA2 Maxtor HDD, I first formatted/part'ed when I had installed windows7, and now being back to my xp I cannot browse the partition, the driver letter appears but I cannot access the information, i put the drive in another computer running Windows 7 and all the data was accessible. I tried like a ton of part. managers and no luck so far.
My question is how can I convert my partition back to NTFS from extFS or WinFS?
Google didn't helped me at all, it's been 2 days since I am looking for a solution to this, no result on google (or this forum or other forums for that matter) will give me a compatible partition manager/tool or I am unable to find the keywords for it.
I'm preparing a fresh install of Win 7 Pro on a 2 disk system (90GB SSD and 1TB HDD). I'll be placing the OS/Apps on the SSD and Data and image restore files on HDD.Qs:1. If I allocate ~60GB for the OS/Apps partition, and actual storage of the OS/Apps is 35GB...what size partition do I need on the HDD to save this image file? I assume the compressed file will be 45-50% of original. Will I want to store multiple image files created over the course of time as apps are added and system is further optimized, and hence need a partition that is a multiple of the OS/App partition size? What do you do?2. Also, an 8GB RamDisk will serve as scratch disk space for some apps (RamDisk +) which can save an image of the session's writes upon shutdown. I plan to save this image to the 2nd HDD. Is it recommended that I save this to same partition that stores the OS/App image in Q #1 above,
how i can format my pen drive if window 7 and XP is unable to format it. they are saying files are in use. i have kept window xp, photoshop and some other software in it. Now please tell me how can i delete these items or format it.
Table top, Acer brand, Aspire M5700HDD: 500GBPart: 1. Hidden partition, 20GB, eRecovery2.Partition C partitioned by Acer, 240GB, OS3. Partition D partitioned by Acer, 240GBI plan to format both C and D partitions and make 4 partitions.So, check with Acer firstAcer's reply is confusing, saying that the hidden partition will be damaged if format C partition
I wanna re-size my partition disks. I have C: and D:, I want to shrink C's volume, and extend D's, is it possible without a format? If so, how? (I don't care if it needed a 3rd party program).If I need to do a format to get this done, how to?
I was wondering what's a good size for a Windows 7 pagefile partition? I have Windows 7 installed on my primary drive (OS) and decided to make a 7GB pagefile partition on my secondary drive as I heard it is better to have the pagefile on a different hard drive. I have 6GB of memory installed if it makes any difference.
Is 7GB enough? I noticed the partition already gets filled up so I had to disable that annoying "hard drive disk space is low" balloon notifications that kept popping up.. people are getting away with having no pagefile so I figured 7GB would be more than enough?
I should add that I am not experiencing any blue screens of death or any problems despite the notifications popping up.
The hdd has two patitions named C and D (for recovery).Upgrading from Vista to Window 7, has rendered the 10 GB (partition D) too small. The partition C is 176 GB
I have used computer management in order to increase the c drive. I have used control panel, then system and security then administrative tools then computer management? From there I have shrunk the G drive. I need now to name the unallocated part of this drive in order to copy the files in the new G drives. After that I can increase the size of C drive.
In setting up my wife's computer, I allocated 30 gigs to the C: partition...probably a big mistake. I'd like to increase its size by about 100G, and I have shrunk the D: and E: partitions accordingly, using the Disk Management tool.
Now however I am stuck with two separate blocks of unallocated space, and apparently no way to expand the C: partition into that extra space. Is there any way this can be done within Windows 7 or do I have to seek out some additional software?
back to make my main partition (C: ) where I installed windows only 50gb big. What I wonder is, is it possible to decrease the second partition in size and move that extra size to the main partition without damaging data on both partitions?
I made a mistake when installing Windows 7 on a 150GB hard drive which previously had three partitions.I formatted all three and chose to install the OS to a 75 gb partition.
Everything installed ok but I am 75 GB down on hard disc space.
Is there any simple ways to amalgamate the other 75GB partition to give me back my original size of 150GB?
I think I made a mistake, as when I partitioned my drive after I bought my laptop, I set my Windows partition(C to a much smaller size than usual (30gb). Now I see in the Computer section in win 7 64bit that the drive has like 3 gb of free space. Is that enough for running ? I would like to increase the size of this partition, but with the ordinary way, I can just lower the size, not increase it.
Also, I would like to change the menu and running language to English. Laptop is in German right now, I speak the language, but I`ve gotten used to having my software in English...
