Friday, January 19, 2007

How to: Format your Zune's Hard Drive

Although I have not tried this, there have been several people confirming that this works. Please be advised the following steps will completely erase all your music, pictures, and videos. Do not attempt this if you still want anything on your Zune.

First, hold the back+down button to shut down.

During bootup...

Format EVERYTHING (Including firmware)
Hold the back+left_center to do a full format. (It will they go through several steps and ask you to connect your Zune to the PC and upload the latest firmware. You need to complete this for your Zune to run normal.

Format DATA ONLY
Hold back+right+center to erase your content (music/pictures/videos). Everything will run find but you will not find anything on your Zune.

That should do it, please leave some comments to let me know how it works out for you!

15 Comments:

Jeremiah Dunn said...

thanks for the post, i tried the full format and it worked fine, i was having a few glitches from where i messed around in the system files and it didn't like every thing i did so thank you

Steve said...

No problem, I am glad it worked out for you!

Unknown said...

yikes, yeah, it worked. thanks a lot. i had to completly erase mine because it said i was using 25 gigs, yet i had no video, pics, or music...

thanks again

Unknown said...

Yep, both of them work. Thanks!

MatthewP said...

thank you! i had the exact same problem as jonathan, except it said i was using 13gb!! it was driving me crazy...

Troy's Blog said...

cool, worked for me thanks

harold said...

my zune dosent charge or zinc. when i plug it, it starts charging til its operational then stops. i changed the batery, but nothing hapened. some one recomended a full format, but cant do it.

Paulo said...

Now, when you said back+left+center, what exactly did you mean by back?

Unknown said...

Could not get format to work. Any other suggestions?

Weezel said...

back is the left arrow. <- + dpad left + center of dpad

moransa said...

Tried the data format and it is not working. I read the instructions on at least three pages and could not get it to work. But it seems I am the only one having this issue so maybe I am just f'ing retarded...

Unknown said...

Worked great. For some reason I had doubles of every file. Formated then resynced and double to space =)

Barev_dez said...

Formatting and reinitializing your Zune30/4/8/16/80/120 Devices:
To perform the following, you must first reboot your device (hold the back button and up), and then when the screen goes black, hold the corresponding buttons until the process begins. (“OK” refers to pressing the center of the D-Pad/Z-Pad.)


Clear Content (Format from Device) – Clears all media content from the device, but leaves the firmware intact.
V1 Devices (Zune 30): Press and hold Back + Right + OK
V2 Devices (Zune 4/8 and 80/120): Press and hold Back + Play/Pause


Initialize Disk – Removes the content and the firmware. Device will be inoperable until connected to a PC so new firmware can be installed.
V1 Devices (Zune 30): Press and hold Back + Left + OK
V2 Devices (Zune 4/8 and 80/120): Press and hold Back + OK + Play/Pause

Parth said...

hey, i did a data format and it worked perfect.
thanks

Unknown said...

i just completed the Full Hard drive reformat... hope this fixes the hard drive music skipping while playing...thank you...will post again

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