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Products => Solved Storage Threads => : seahorse March 04, 2009, 10:48:51 PM

: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: seahorse March 04, 2009, 10:48:51 PM
   

Yesterday I received the ministation HD-PF320U2 I ordered on Amazon. In the user manual it is recommended to reformat the drive in NTFS but doesn't provide much information on how to do it. I launched disk formatter. Disk formatter only offers the possibility to format in FAT formats. Not doing what to do, I clicked on "Physical format". It has been formatting for the last 1084 minutes (over 18 hours...). When is this going to end? How long does it normally takes to do a physical format?

 

Is there a better and faster way to get out of this mess? What is the correct way to do a NTFS format?

 

All this should be explained clearly in the user manual... Shame on Buffalo for not being able to provide clear information.

: Re: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: seahorse March 05, 2009, 06:47:11 PM
   

I received a reply from Buffalo explaining that NTFS is a proprietary Microsoft file format and that instead of using disk formatter I should have connected the ministation to a windows computer and then go to 'Start' > 'Run' and then type: CONVERT E: /FS:NTFS

This tells me what I should have done; it doesn't tell me what I should do now to get out of this mess: disk formatter is still formatting my ministation: 38 hours and counting.... How many more days or weeks should I wait????? Or should I consider the ministation as lost beyond repair and throw it away????

Anybody can help? How long does a physical format normally last????

: Re: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: superior April 02, 2009, 11:31:46 PM
   Still running?
: Re: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: seahorse April 03, 2009, 12:57:44 AM
   

After a few days, there was a thunderstorm so I decided to switch off my PC.

 

After the storm, I switched my PC back on and formatted the disk with NTFS using Microsoft disk management.

 

I must say Buffalo support was pretty much useless in helping sorting out this issue. To start with, the user manual should have clearly explained all this.

 

I am now using the ministation and it is really great. Shame that such as great product comes with such a crappy user manual... Come on guys, if you invest all this money and time to develop such a great product, take the time it needs to write a great manual.

: Re: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: superior April 03, 2009, 05:59:47 AM
   

You were lucky then.

Thank god, but my  format finished after 16 hours.

: Re: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: Dustrega April 03, 2009, 08:05:10 PM
My apologies in the delay and vagueness of our documentation. I am glad that you got your drive formatted however I will kindly request that you refrain from slandering our technical support on these forums. Actions such as this are not looked upon kindly. We try to answer everyone's questions in a quick and orderly fashion and sadly there are times when we are unable to get to all of them. In the future you would want to go to Disk Management by right clicking on "My Computer" and choosing "Manage" you can then select the partition you wish to format (which would be the size that closely matches your MiniStation) quickly. If you're unsure as to which partition it is you can unplug the USB drive, wait 5 seconds and plug it back in to see which partition appears. My apologies once again.
: Re: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: ade June 05, 2009, 09:13:08 AM
   

I have also started a physical format for my new Buffalo Ministation 250GB and it is taking a long time too. Since what I really want to do is to format it with NTFS, is it possible to cancel the physical format?

 

Thanks for any suggestions.

: Re: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: PCPiranha June 11, 2009, 04:27:05 PM
I wouldnt cancel it.  Did you do a quick or complete format?
: Re: physical format of ministation HD-PF320U2
: searspring April 08, 2010, 12:15:18 AM
   

Hi, i do have a new ministation lite and i want to format the drive and use the NTFS File system, May i ask, should i do a quick format or complete format? Thanks