WD MyPassport Ultra 2TB exFat problem

[pitrak]

Hi,

I bought this disk and reformatted it to exFat in windows7 to be able to share data with my wive who's on a macbook. I read about this on different websites, so I gave it a go. I used the standard cluster size.

Afterwards, windows recognised the HD, but only for a couple of seconds. I tried on USB 2 and 3, didn't make a difference. Sometimes the disk was recognised, sometimes not. And I was not able to copy anything.

After some testing, I decided to reformat it to NTFS. In windows, I could get all the way to the format button, but after that, nothing happened. Tried different PCs (didn't try mac) and different programs to get the disk going - Find and Mount and EaseUS Partition Master. Both were 'not responding' after I pressed format. I was not able to close the program as well. So I had to close them with the task manager as there was no progression after 30 minutes. Maybe that made it worse, but I didn't see another option..

Now I'm trying HDD low level format. First program that seems to do something. But after 80 minutes it has formatted 310.000 sectors of the 4.000.000.000 512 byte sectors. 0.0MB/S..

I was planning to buy the software to make it faster, but the problem is clearly elsewhere.

Any suggestions? I'm stuck here for 26.000 hours, and I have to go to work tomorrow

[ShaneWard]

The drive could be faulty, return it to the shop for a new one.

Shane

[pcimage]

The drive could be faulty, return it to the shop for a new one.

Shane

Agree, probably bad sectors

[HaQue]

I just read in another post that LLF can sometimes void a warranty.. I hope you are successful.

[ShaneWard]

I doubt very much that a supermarket or of the street computer shop will dig too much. Just say the drive stopped working and they should just box it away and give a new one. Supermarkets probably will only look to see if all the parts are thee, drive, cable, manual.

[pitrak]

Ok, thanks, I'll just stop trying to recover it then..

I bought it online, I'll just have to send it back.

If I get a new one, is it wise to format it to exFat again? It seems some people are having problems with exFat formatted external HDDs.
Or is FAT32 a safer choice? I know it has a 4GB file limit, but PC-Mac compatibility is more important..

[labtech]

Or is FAT32 a safer choice?

Try to forget FAT32 even exits.
Unless you can create backups of your data on devices that are formatted to better file systems within their own environment, such as HFS+ for Mac and NTFS for Win.

[pitrak]

Thanks for all your advice, you've all been a big help!!

Try to forget FAT32 even exits.

Do you know a good program to selectively hard format a part of my brain?

Seriously, what's the issue with FAT32? Is it more unreliable? If FAT32 and exFat would be the only choices, what would you choose?

I want an external HD to keep all my music and have a backup of all my pictures as I only have 500GB storage on ly laptop. My wive also wants access to the pictures, so a common file system is quite important.

But if I run the risk of having the same problems again, I'ld rather stick to NTFS for my new WD 2TB. I could try to reformat my older 1,5TB 3.5" HDD to exfat and use it as a secondary backup and exchange disk with my wive. The disk is still working, but there is an error on boot, so a reformat would be good. But first I need the other HDD to transfer everything..