Running a diskpart "clean" command fails frequently in current Win 11 version

hsehestedt · Feb 25, 2022

I've been experiencing an odd problem with Diskpart lately, wondering if anyone else is seeing this. It's really easy to reproduce.

Steps to Reproduce
==================
Plug in a thumb drive
Run diskpart
Within diskpart run the following commands (in my example, my thumb drive is disk 2). Be careful as this will erase the selected drive!:

list disk
select disk 2
clean

DiskPart has encountered an error: A device which does not exist was specified.
See the System Event Log for more information.

DISKPART>

If I look in event viewer, I see this message:

Cannot zero sectors on disk \\?\PhysicalDrive2. Error code: 1B1@0101000F

More Information
================
First, note that the above error happens ONLY if the thumb drive is configured for MBR. It will NEVER happen when it is GPT.

Second, my initial workaround was to simply issue the "clean" command again. Probably about 90% of the time, a second run of the command will work. However, I have had times in a batch file where it does not succeed, maybe due to the short time between the two commands. I have a program as well as several batch files that have a need for this to be rock stable.

I have a new workaround that seems to be working 100% for me, but it's stupid that I need to even employ such a workaround.

The new workaround is like this:

list disk
select disk 2
clean
convert gpt
clean
convert gpt
clean
convert mbr

The idea of the above series of commands is to try and perform a clean 3 times. Since we know that it never fails when GPT is used, after each clean we do a "convert gpt". By doing so, if we had a successful clean operation, we can guarantee that the next clean will not fail because we are now in GPT mode. Now, we are in a known good state, so we can do a final "convert mbr" successfully. The end result is a successfully cleaned disk using MBR.

I only just converted a system back to windows 10 so I have not been able to test to see if this happens on Windows 10. I plan to try it this evening. However, it's happening frequently on my Win 11 machines. Note that all my Win 11 machines are on the latest Feb 2022 Windows patches.

Has anyone else been noticing this? I can't swear how long this happening, but I became very aware of it in the last few weeks, definitely before the Feb patches rolled out.

zbook · Feb 26, 2022

hsehestedt said:
However, I have had times in a batch file where it does not succeed, maybe due to the short time between the two commands. I have a program as well as several batch files that have a need for this to be rock stable.

There is 15 second time out required between batch files.
Without the 15 second time out the second command may fail.

For example: diskpart /t 15

For the MBR clean see if adding noerr makes any difference. For example diskpart > sel dis 3 > clean noerr

Also instead of clean see if delete partition noerr override makes any difference.

This link had a similar work around mbr > gpt to clean:

Error couldn't clean the drive... · Issue #1991 · balena-io/etcher

**Etcher version:**1.2.1 Operating system and architecture: Windows 10 Home v. 1703, built-in SD card reader (Samsung 32 GB micro SD card in adapter) Image #flashed: Retropie 4.3 Do you see any mea...

github.com

hsehestedt · Feb 26, 2022

Thanks for the suggestions, zbook. I will give those a try.

zbook · Feb 27, 2022

hsehestedt said:
Thanks for the suggestions, zbook. I will give those a try.

This is a link on the t /15

Code:

 Important

When using the DiskPart command as a part of a script,
it is recommended that you complete all of the DiskPart
operations together as part of a single DiskPart script.
You can run consecutive DiskPart scripts,
but you must allow at least 15 seconds between each script
for a complete shutdown of the previous execution before
running the DiskPart command again in successive scripts.
Otherwise, the successive scripts might fail.
You can add a pause between consecutive DiskPart scripts
by adding the timeout /t 15 command to your batch file along
with your DiskPart scripts.

DiskPart Command-Line Options

docs.microsoft.com

hsehestedt · Feb 27, 2022

zbook said:

This is a link on the t /15

Code:

 Important

When using the DiskPart command as a part of a script,
it is recommended that you complete all of the DiskPart
operations together as part of a single DiskPart script.
You can run consecutive DiskPart scripts,
but you must allow at least 15 seconds between each script
for a complete shutdown of the previous execution before
running the DiskPart command again in successive scripts.
Otherwise, the successive scripts might fail.
You can add a pause between consecutive DiskPart scripts
by adding the timeout /t 15 command to your batch file along
with your DiskPart scripts.

DiskPart Command-Line Options

docs.microsoft.com

I appreciate that, but that's not the issue I'm encountering. Even if I run diskpart manually with no previous operations pending, the clean fails most of the time but only if the disk is MBR - NEVER for a GPT disk.

thomaseg1 · Feb 27, 2022

Hmmm interesting....Have you tried running

Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

and sfc /scannow to see if they could repair diskpart ( or if its damaged)

Also have you tried deleting the partition 1st then rebuilding it in win 11?

You should only have to do this once.
I seem to recall in Win 8 that there was a problem with diskpart not not liking mbr disks done in win 7.
but I can't pin it down.

johnlgalt · Feb 28, 2022

hsehestedt said:
I've been experiencing an odd problem with Diskpart lately, wondering if anyone else is seeing this. It's really easy to reproduce.

Steps to Reproduce
==================
Plug in a thumb drive
Run diskpart
Within diskpart run the following commands (in my example, my thumb drive is disk 2). Be careful as this will erase the selected drive!:

list disk
select disk 2
clean

DiskPart has encountered an error: A device which does not exist was specified.
See the System Event Log for more information.

DISKPART>

If I look in event viewer, I see this message:

Cannot zero sectors on disk \\?\PhysicalDrive2. Error code: 1B1@0101000F

More Information
================
First, note that the above error happens ONLY if the thumb drive is configured for MBR. It will NEVER happen when it is GPT.

Second, my initial workaround was to simply issue the "clean" command again. Probably about 90% of the time, a second run of the command will work. However, I have had times in a batch file where it does not succeed, maybe due to the short time between the two commands. I have a program as well as several batch files that have a need for this to be rock stable.

I have a new workaround that seems to be working 100% for me, but it's stupid that I need to even employ such a workaround.

The new workaround is like this:

list disk
select disk 2
clean
convert gpt
clean
convert gpt
clean
convert mbr

The idea of the above series of commands is to try and perform a clean 3 times. Since we know that it never fails when GPT is used, after each clean we do a "convert gpt". By doing so, if we had a successful clean operation, we can guarantee that the next clean will not fail because we are now in GPT mode. Now, we are in a known good state, so we can do a final "convert mbr" successfully. The end result is a successfully cleaned disk using MBR.

I only just converted a system back to windows 10 so I have not been able to test to see if this happens on Windows 10. I plan to try it this evening. However, it's happening frequently on my Win 11 machines. Note that all my Win 11 machines are on the latest Feb 2022 Windows patches.

Has anyone else been noticing this? I can't swear how long this happening, but I became very aware of it in the last few weeks, definitely before the Feb patches rolled out.

Interesting. I recently cleanly installed because I upgraded all my NVMe SSDs and I ran into a similar issue - but it was not something that I do often, so I shrugged it off.

Now that you have steps of reproducibility, I'll see if I can get it to replicate on my end as well. WOuld not be surprised at all if there is a bug there that recently manifested itself that almost no one has found.

hsehestedt · Feb 28, 2022

johnlgalt said:
Interesting. I recently cleanly installed because I upgraded all my NVMe SSDs and I ran into a similar issue - but it was not something that I do often, so I shrugged it off.

Now that you have steps of reproducibility, I'll see if I can get it to replicate on my end as well. WOuld not be surprised at all if there is a bug there that recently manifested itself that almost no one has found.

Thanks, John.

Kari · Feb 28, 2022

hsehestedt said:
I appreciate that, but that's not the issue I'm encountering. Even if I run diskpart manually with no previous operations pending, the clean fails most of the time but only if the disk is MBR - NEVER for a GPT disk.

Not a solution, just a workaround:

Diff:

diskpart
sel disk X
convert GPT
clean
convert MBR

Kari

hsehestedt · Feb 28, 2022

Kari said:
Not a solution, just a workaround:

Diff:

diskpart sel disk X convert GPT clean convert MBR

Kari

Thanks, Kari. As I noted in my original post, that's almost exactly what I do but I perform the clean 3 times because it sometimes fails the first time, and on very rare occasion, fails the 2nd time. After each clen I perform a convert gpt because once I get it to gpt, I'm guaranteed success after that.

So it ends up looking like this:

Code:

list disk
select disk 2
clean
convert gpt
clean
convert gpt
clean
convert mbr

Dch48 · Feb 28, 2022

When I need to remove partitions and reset a thumbdrive I don't use diskpart. I hate command line interfaces so I use a 3rd party utility like EaseUS Partition Manager or Partition Wizard. They always work.

Running a diskpart "clean" command fails frequently in current Win 11 version

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