For anyone getting the error "This disk is offline because of a policy set by the administrator" in Disk Management, this tutorial worked great. There was no "online" option, somehow.
However, after erasing the disk with the clean command, I was able to "online" and then "initialize" the drive without issue! Was worried the drive was broken, but the clean command fixed it right.
Saved me once again, Ten Forums. 💪
To clean, zero, and re-format a disk, is there any reason to use diskpart 'clean', followed by full format, rather than 'clean all', followed by quick format? The full format I gather also does a sector check.
Gaps in my knowledge:
1- does the reinitialization after clean all provide any benefit for refreshing the drive?
2- when is a full sector check advisable? Is there a likely benefit to the sector check if the SMART info is not showing any warnings or errors in sector parameters (don't recall/know for sure which parameters are relevant)? If not, can repository drives, where they are essentially written to only once or a couple of times overall, be expected to ever need a full re-formatting?
I'm planning on giving another try to a Seagate 3TB Backup Plus external drive (GPT, NTFS) which spooked me by dropping out fairly frequently when I previously tried using it for backup purpose. I want to zero and re-format the drive first, probably on a Windows 7 machine. I won't use the drive for anything important, but I'd like to start re-evaluating the prior bad experience, before shucking the enclosure and trying it that way.
Hello,
The "clean all" command is basically just for the purpose of doing a secure erase to permanently wipe all data on the drive by zeroing every sector. This is useful when say trashing or giving the drive away.
"Clean all" doesn't provide any extra benefit other than a secure erase over just "clean".
Thank you for the reply. I *think* I want to secure erase, and was wondering how to know or guess whether the bad sector check of the full format command might be a good idea.Hello,
The "clean all" command is basically just for the purpose of doing a secure erase to permanently wipe all data on the drive by zeroing every sector. This is useful when say trashing or giving the drive away.
"Clean all" doesn't provide any extra benefit other than a secure erase over just "clean".
Do you know if there is an advantage for file recovery in the event of corruption, to starting with a drive that is all zeroes? I had thought the lack of fragments and remnants would make that easier? The drive would be a backup, and most files would be written once, with few deletions.
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