M2 drive from PS5, formatting to use back in a PC (problem)

father-ted · 20 Aug 2023 at 09:23

Hi,

I am trying to format a M2 hard drive for a mate, it has been in his PS5 but he has sold that and wants to use the 4tb drtive in his PC.
He has already tried to format it himself (Windows 10) and failed.

I have tried to format using CMD (as admin), and get a 'semaphore timeout' message.

Not sure what to do to fix this, any advice please?

Thanks

Joxeon · 20 Aug 2023 at 09:25

Try and format it in the bios.

father-ted · 20 Aug 2023 at 13:41

When I managed to get into the drive, there were x2 partitions.
First partition, managed to format that ok, then it let me delete both and format as a whole.
Sorted, thanks.

darael · 20 Aug 2023 at 21:04

Don't format the drive, use the clean command in diskpart, but make sure you choose the correct drive first. With everything on the drive wiped, use Disk Management to create a new partition and do a quick format.

ZXSpectrum · 21 Aug 2023 at 13:21

I believe its because the PS5 gives it some odd (To PC) information in the drive table that causes the issue. Like darael says go into diskpart, list disk to determine which drive target you want to format, type sel disk (Disk Number you are trying to format) and return, clean. That should revert the drive to bare non partitioned unit and should now be formattable. Should you have further issues i would suggest going into your bios and looking in the tools menu and see if there is a SSD erase/Secure erase option and run it through that.

Hope that helps.