[Fixed] Windows 11 Disk Management Stuck on Formatting

Scenario: Windows 11 Disk Management stuck on formatting HDD

“I tried to reformat my internal HDD but then it’s stuck on formatting in disk management. Should I cancel the task or not, since it's been like this since I tried to format it? And can I interpret the formatting?”

Why is Disk Management formatting stuck?

Many users have met this problem when they use Disk Management to format the whole disk. In fact, if your disk works well and the port is not damaged, the time of disk formatting in Disk Management depends mostly on the capacity size of the disk, and the second and third factors are the formatting type you choose and the interface connection type.

▶ Size factor
A 1 TB hard drive will take many, many hours at the typical average write speeds of 60-70 MB/sec. Many users would give it overnight before giving up. You'd better not expect benchmark speeds of 140-150 MB/sec during a complete long format procedure.

▶ Formatting type
A complete format takes longer than a quick format. This is due to the fact that a rapid format simply deletes data from a partition before rebuilding the file system, volume label, and cluster. A full format will completely delete data from a partition and render it unrecoverable.

▶ Interface connection type
The speed of formatting is also affected by the interface connection. USB 2.0, for example, is slower than the USB 3.0 interface, while USB 3.0 is slower than USB 3.1. If you wish to fast format an external hard disk, you need to be aware of the interface connection type you choose.

Many consumers would try it for an entire night before giving up. If the disk has actual issues, which may have resulted in the elimination of partitions and the recreation of a single partition, formatting, the reformat may just display the faults again.

Here we test the time of formatting different disks with common sizes in Disk Management, hope this can give you a reference:

◤ 500GB: A 500GB hard drive takes about 10 minutes to format when selecting Quick Format and it takes about half an hour under the Full Format

◤ 1TB: Quick Format on a 1TB hard drive takes about 20 minutes, the Full Format 1 hour.

◤ 2TB: A 2TB hard drive can be formatted in about 30 minutes. However, a Full Format can take up to 3 hours. If this hard drive stores many data, it could take a half day.

◤ 4TB: If the target disk is about 4TB, the quick format will also take a long time but the full format will need the whole day.

How to fix Windows 11 Disk Management stuck on formatting?

If it isn't moving and hasn't been for a long time, you have nothing to lose. You can restart your computer, restart the operating system, then clean the drive and use diskpart to format the disk.

Method 1. Clean disk and quick format via Diskpart

Step 1. Run Diskpart as administrator (Press Windows + R simultaneously, input “diskpart” and hit Enter key).

Step 2. Input the following commands and hit Enter after each one:

• list disk
• select disk n (n stands for the number of the disk going to be formatted)
• clean
• create partition primary
• format fs=ntfs quick (If you need FAT32, type: format fs=fat32 quick)

Method 2. Quick format disk via freeware

If you’re not familiar with the Command Prompt, you can also choose a third-party tool. AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a free disk and partition manager for Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP users to securely and efficiently manage their devices. Users can use this tool to format/create/copy/delete/partition, and permanently wipe data on a partition and a disk before selling to protect their privacy.

The formatting feature of this tool supports NTFS, FAT32, Ext2, Ex3, Ext4, and exFAT file systems, so you can also use this tool to format your disks that are larger than 2TB for Xbox, PlayStation consoles, and other devices.

Step 1. Install AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Run it, and the disk that you need to format to NTFS will be displayed in the main interface. Right-click it and choose “Format Partition”.

Step 2. In the pop-up window, choose NTFS among listed file systems and click “OK”.

Step 3. You’ll return to the main interface. Confirm your operation and click “Apply”>“Proceed” to perform it.

To sum up

This is how to fix Windows 11 Disk Management stuck on formatting. If SSD stuck formatting occurs, you can try the methods we list for you. AOMEI Partition Assistant is a handy tool. If you upgrade to the Professional Edition, you can enjoy more practical functions such as allocating free space to C drive, moving installed apps without reinstalling, converting to MBR/GPT without data loss, migrating OS, etc.

And if you have Windows Server PC, you can choose the Server Edition which supports Windows Server 2025/2022/2019/2016/2012(R2)/2008(R2)/2003.