Formatting a hard drive is very important as it keeps the system healthy and serves many more purposes. Sometimes, people who are looking to install a new operating system to their systems also try to format their drives. Cleaning drives before the installation of the new operating system proves to be very beneficial. But sometimes, while performing this formatting, people face the error 0x8004242d. In this blog, we are going to discuss this error and how to fix it.

Why may this error occur?

Error 0x8004242d occurs due to several reasons. These reasons could be corruption in the Master Boot Record of the drive. Damage in the installation hard disk drive can also cause this error. Another reason is that the Windows mass storage controller has some issues, mostly hardware problems.

How to fix 0x8004242d?

Now we know that error 0x8004242d arises when a user tries to format their drive partitions. Now, let’s move forward with fixing it. We are quoting a combination of hacks and solutions. You can try all of them one by one to see which one fixes your issue.

  • Remove the Hard Disk Drives

If you use more than one Hard Disk Drives, then it might lead to this error. The more hard disk drives are attached, the chances of the error increases. In order to get rid of the error, you should try removing the hard disk drives that are not in use for the installation of Windows. After removing the spare hard disk drives, check if the error still persists. If it does, try the next method.

  • Try deleting the partitions

As we know, this error may arise because of the corruption that occurred in the Master Boot Record of the drive. The corruption in Master Boot Record won’t let the installer locate the required partition correctly at the installation time. So, in this case, one hack is to delete all the partitions.

So, at the time of booting from the installation media, don’t try to format your partition. Rather, try to delete each partition one by one. Always remember to take a backup while performing the deletion of partition. If you have mistakenly deleted all the partitions without taking the proper backup, don’t worry. You can still retrieve and recover the lost data with the help of a professional data recovery tool.

Windows Data Recovery Tool is one such data recovery tool that can help you to recover all the lost, deleted, permanently deleted, and inaccessible data in case of such uncertainty. This tool is very easy to use and comes with some exciting advanced features. With its advanced features, you can fix Windows 10 corruption issues and retrieve all the lost data and customize the whole process and the results. Moreover, you can recover deleted data from Windows 10 using this tool.

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  • Try Diskpart.exe

Cleaning the disk with Dikpart.exe utility is another possible solution to this error. Even to perform this error, you must take a proper backup of your disk. Let’s know how to clean the disk with Diskpart.exe:

  1. In the Windows Search bar, type Command Prompt. As the Command Prompt option pops up, make right-click on it and select Run as Administrator from the given menu.
  2. Now, as the Command Prompt window opens, type Diskpart and hit the Enter key in the command line.
  3. Now, type list disk and again press the Enter key.
  4. Now, in the output of the command, you will see that multiple disks are mentioned. There, you need to count the number of the disk you are looking to clean.
  5. Once you have counted the disk, enter a command select disk 3 (Here 3 is the number of the disks you want to clean; kindly replace 3 with the number you want to proceed with).
  6. Now, type clean and hit Enter. By doing this, all your available data will be deleted from the disk.
  7. Now, the cleaning of the disks will take place. Wait for the cleaning process to finish and close the Command prompt once it is done

After performing all the above-mentioned steps, check if the error still shows. Try the next one.

  • Format Partition

When the Windows installation process is going on, you can try to format the partition. For this, you will first need to delete all the partitions. After deleting all the partitions, you will need to create a new partition, and finally, you will format that newly created partition. Follow the below-mentioned steps for the same:

  1. Start with Running the Windows Installation setup.
  2. Now, click on Install now option.
  3. Accept the terms and conditions by clicking on the I accept the terms of license.
  4. Next, you will get the two options in the Install Windows window. Under Which type of installation do you want? Click on the Custom (advanced) option.
  5. In the next step, choose the partition that you want to delete and finally delete it.

Conclusion:

In this blog, we have discussed the error 0x8004242d. This error occurs while a user tries to format a disk partition. We suggested many manual methods with which you can fix the error. Also, we suggested to use Windows Data Recovery to recover the deleted data from the disk in case of any data inaccessibility.