Unable To Normally Format External Drive
Apr 24, 2010
It's unable to either normally format any external memory devices into a FAT or FAT32 format, or unable to read it at all. I keep trying to open the device but it keeps saying that i need to format it, but because of problem 1, it can't be formated (it almost completes but the process shuts down, stating that it can't be formated). This problem has been happening for the longest time and I really need this fixed.
When I say external memory devices, i mean CDs, DVDs, Flash drives, SD cards, memory card readers. Everytime I check the disk management of these devices, it says they are Primary Partitioned (which is the normal status right?). And the only thing that seems to be the problem is the RAW file system (which I heard windows doesn't read)............
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Jan 10, 2010
I have a 500GB MY BOOK external hard drive that I use for my monthly backup. I did a right click/properties/general and saw My Book is almost used up. Do I format the external drive and start another back up series? Is there a way I can back up over the previous data? As you can tell I am new to external hard drives....
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May 31, 2008
Just received a USB drive today from ebay 8 gig drive. Upon putting it into my computer it comes up as unformatted. So press format and errors at the end (unable to complete format). Then tried to format the drive via computer management in admin tools. All goes OK - 8 Gig showing. Copied 6.5 Gig onto it to test, and only some of the files work. About 2 Gig of AVI work but the others open as corrupted - same problem on my PS3. Thinking its either faulty or got a feeling its a fake 2 Gig. If its fake can you somehow restore the orginal boot / bios to get it back (better than nothing i suppose). Eneco flash drive 2.10 16777216 lba
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Mar 23, 2008
When I try to connect an external USB hard drive or a USB memory stick to my laptop, Vista throws up a message saying: ???Windows needs to install driver software for your Unknown Device???. I let Vista search, but Vista cannot find the required driver. However, when I connect the same external USB hard drive or a USB memory stick to my desktop PC, also running Vista Ultimate, Vista has no problems recognizing the device and installing the required driver automatically and without throwing up any messages. I suspect that some Vista service(s) on my laptop might be disabled or not functioning properly, but I cannot find out which one could be the cause. Perhaps someone here could point me in the right direction.
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Mar 23, 2008
When I try to disconnect my external usb drive I get the following message. " Windows can't stop your Generic volume device because it is in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device, and then try again later." I have no programs running that would be accessing the USB external drive that I know of. Is there some way to find out what program is accessing it? I have things in the back ground like Windows Onecare who uses that drive to back up my files, but happens in the middle of the night.
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May 6, 2009
I am writing because i have an external 500Gig Western Digital HDD that I have been using for months now...it has not been exposed to extreme temperatures, banged around or overused in any way. I plugged it in today and it showed up under "My Computer" as Local Disk(F: ).
Then a message came up stating "You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it." Next it asks if i want to format now, and i can choose Format, or Cancel. I am not sure if this is some sort of driver issue, something more serious with the computer, or if this is something with this drive.
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Jul 29, 2009
i just bought My Book Essential 1 TB today... and when i got home i plug it and it works just fine but its bothering me that the HDD type is FAT32 .. so i format it and try to change it to NTFS.. but somethings happen and boom the electric in my apartment was down... and so when the electric back i want to format it again but i can't... there drive is detected but with no space detail... it says "Windows can't format Drive H: - Check to see that the disk and drive are connected properly, make sure that the disk is not read-only, and then try again.
For more information, search Help for read-only files and how to change them" when i open the Disk Management from (My COmputer > Manage) it seems it's already a volume.. but the weird thing there is no space detail.. and i cant erase the volume ... i've tried using diskpart but i can't do nothing because there is no volume and i can't erase the disk... no luck with fsutil cause its not ntfs... I havent tried 3rd party software and i havent tried it on other computer (don't have other computer right now) and WDC didnt give live cd for formatting because all of them was in the drive... though i already redownload it but the program is useless..
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Mar 1, 2010
im trying to reformatt my vista partition. Because I feel like it, and its getting a bit laggy.
But anyways, I go and click on computer->vista drive->format->quick format-> error unable to format.
why does this happen!
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Jun 21, 2008
I'm trying to format some CD-RW disks to make my backup disks and only once out of about 10 tries have I been successful. I keep getting a message that says "windows is unable to format disk"
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Mar 17, 2010
Unable to fully format or erase Any programs in the net I can use?
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Jul 30, 2009
I have an issue on my Gateway Laptop computer model MT6832B which has an Opiarc ad-7530a DVD RW drive. I also have the same issue on my DELL Dimension E520 with a TSST corp DVD+- RW TS -H653A drive. Both Computers are running on Vista Home Premium Service Pack2
When I try to format either a Philips DVD+RW disk or a Panasonic DVD-R disk, on either machine, after apparently going through the formatting procedure I get a message that Windows was unable to complete the format. It is strange that the identical issue is found on both machines. Could Vista be causing the issue? I would mention that I am able to format a CD-RW disk OK.
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May 4, 2009
I have a Vista Ultimate 64 bit system using an ASUS striker II formula MB, Intel core 2 quad 2.66 mh CPU, 8 GB RAM. It was setup with 2 320 GB Seagate drives and a 500 GB Seagate drive in a RAID. A week and a half ago when shutting down the system, I got the install updates message. I clicked OK. Upon return, I found the system still running showing the BIOS screen. After reboot, I had a no operating system error. Using the Vista DVD to attempt repair, yielded a corrupt partition error. I attempted to reinstall Vista on one 320 GB drive. This gave a disk boot failure. After trying this and that, I ran chkdsk during boot which fixed the error. I want to recover my data. To facilitate recovery, I purchased 2 1.5 GB Seagate drives. I have attempted to format the drives using computer management and safe mode with command prompt. The drives will get to 73% format but no farther.
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Jul 30, 2009
I have an issue on my Gateway Laptop computer model MT6832B which has an Opiarc ad-7530a DVD RW drive. I also have the same issue on my DELL Dimension E520 with a TSST corp DVD+- RW TS -H653A drive. Both Computers are running on Vista Home Premium Service Pack2 My issue is this. When I try to format either a Philips DVD+RW disk or a Panasonic DVD-R disk, on either machine, after apparently going through the formatting procedure I get a message that Windows was unable to complete the format. It is strange that the identical issue is found on both machines. Could Vista be causing the issue? I would mention that I am able to format a CD-RW disk OK.
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Mar 23, 2008
when booting up from a vista cd I accidentally had my usb external hard drive plugged in and the drive has been emptied and replaced by windows there are sintimental photos etc on the drive can anyone help me to restore them
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Jul 2, 2008
Does 'Local Disc' D mean it is a drive inside my machine or could it be my external hard drive?
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Oct 6, 2009
I was starting my computer today (that has Vista), and during the start up process, a black screen came up stating that there was an error opening up my external hard drive and it was checking for errors. After it finally booted up, I went to open the hard drive files, and it was totally BLANK! I then restarted the computer, and still the hard drive is EMPTY! I had ALL my important files in there!
The ONLY thing that looks promising is that when I go to Start then to Computer, it shows the hard drive there, and it still shows that 43GB are free of 111GB of storage (same info shows by right clicking on it and going to Properties). Why would it show this if nothing is on the hard drive anymore? Is there ANYWAY to recover these files again you think???? I NEED those files!!!! Remember that the hard drive STILL PHYSICALLY WORKS. It's just that I cannot access the files on my pc at the time for some reason.......
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May 21, 2008
I just bought and installed a external hard drive. I am fairly knowlegable about computers but this is my first Ex. Hard drive and know very little about there use. So what I want to know is how to save my Family Tree Makers files to it. And once I do that how do I know for sure it is opening from my new drive and not my computer C: drive? I saved it to a DVD one time but when the time came when I needed it all that was there was a short cut but no files.
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Apr 14, 2008
Since migrating to Windows Mail a year ago on a new PC running Vista, I've been unable to open, or to save and open, email attachments received in .pdf or .jpg format. When I try to open .pdf attachments, I get an error message reading, "This
file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Set Associations control panel." If I save a .pdf attachment in Adobe Reader and then try to open it, I get a message saying, "Adobe Reader could not open [file] because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded)." I run Adobe Reader 8. Where do I look to find a solution to this problem? Is it related to the similar problem with JPEG's?
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May 18, 2008
I just used Windows Vista to back up my drive to an external drive. It said the backup was successful but when I went to safely remove hardware, I got this message: " Windows can't stop your Generic volume device because it is in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device, and then try again later. "I made sure everything was closed, checked with Task Manager and tried again. Same message. After 20 minutes, I finally just disconnected it.
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Aug 27, 2008
I want to format my c drive in windows vista, I went to disk management,and right click the drive but it is greyed out??.. I want to do a clean install of vista.
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May 18, 2009
my laptop has 1 hard drive that is partitioned in 2 c drive works fine e drive was stopping me from deleting anything from it tried everything so last resort format it so windows started formatting just about to finish and it failed now it wont let me format it and when i went in to computer management it says it is a healthy primary partition drive but the file system is raw how can i get this back to ntfs
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Mar 23, 2008
I have a Vista Ultimate DVD, I want to do a full format of my hard drive, the Vista DVD only does a quick format, or so it seems, it is over in less than a minute.
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Feb 8, 2010
It's my new Sony ebook reader. It works fine on my old XP pc but not my Vista Home Premium laptop. I don't know how reformatting an actual reader would affect the device since every one at the Sony forum has only reformat their memory from the actual reader that has a reformat memory, you lose your books but all the Sony applications that runs the reader are still intact. Since I got this error, I've reformatted via the actual reader and still every time I plug my reader in my USB port, I get this error. I'm scared if I say yes that all the applications that makes the reader works will be wiped out. Here is the thread in the Sony Reader Forum of them trying to help me. I come on on #8 post as Sandyn Sony Reader Forum - Sony PRS300
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Mar 26, 2008
I have a Vista Ultimate DVD, I want to do a full format of my hard drive, the Vista DVD only does a quick format, or so it seems, it is over in less than a minute. How do I do a full format before I install?
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Oct 7, 2009
I've recently been struck down with a trojan. I restored my computer to factory defaults, thinking this would do the trick. It did. However, I'm at Ohio State, and they're policy is that you have to totally reformat your hard drive before you'll be able to use the wireless internet. The problem is, i have an HP HDX16, and HP does not ship with Vista install disks, they have a hidden partition. I tried doing a system restore 3 times, and it didnt work. I backed dup the system defaults to an external hard drive,
My question is, how do i format my hard drive without the Vista Disks?
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Jan 16, 2008
The link below is to the computer I'm on the verge of buying. But, I'm not sure if it will be good for gaming now and in the future. I am torn between 64 bit and 32 bit. What I was thinking to do was to format my hard drive and reinstall 64 bit when the time comes (when all the bugs are worked out). I'm not worried about buying a new graphics card and RAM, as that's expected..........................
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May 28, 2008
I have just repartioned an old ide hard drive which has a very small partition with XP on and i now have a large partition on the drive that i want to use as a back up drive. What format is the best for backup? I have heard that FAT32 is good and it also means it can be read by OSX if the need ever arose (could be useful because my flat mate is a mac user).
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Sep 8, 2009
I have Windows XP and Vista. I always go through "safely remove hardware" before pulling off USB drive on XP. However, I have been trying to do the same on Vista, it seems that I cannot do the same as XP. For instance, I plug in my USB on Vista and it appears as H drive on Vista, when I am ready to do "safely remove hardware", I don't see the device drive H is on the "Safely remove hardware" window, so I cannot stop the H drive. I am concerned about the Vista hardware.
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Feb 17, 2009
Bought a 750 gig Hard Drive in September and haven?t had problem with it until now. I?m about to install a fresh copy of window vista and have backed up everything that?s on the 750gig to an external HDD (no problems there), but when I?ve come to format the 750 gig Hard Drive I?ve notched that it stayed on 99% for a while and in computer management, its showing up as raw, even after the format, I?ve now deleted the partition, re-created it and get the message ?the format did not complete successfully? and then get ? you need to format disk drive D: before you can use it? with the option to format which I choose but even if I try to format it, I get the message ?windows was unable to complete the format?.
Even though I?ve not had any previous problems with the drive, as its worked fine, when I installed the drive when I was using Windows XP, I used partition magic to try and format the drive it and even that didn?t work. So am I right in thinking that there?s a problem with this drive or should I try the Windows Vista Dvd and see if formats in that before I RMA it? Btw the drive in questions is a Western Digital 750GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM Green Power
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Jun 13, 2008
I have a problem with my Hard Drive and all i want to ask is: If i make a new partition, and store all my media there, will the files be deleted after I format my Hard Drive? Because i get some 0 unallocated hard drive spaces which i cant delete.
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Mar 23, 2008
I have a new Vista Ultimate OS and put an Hitachi 320Gig Hard drive in the extra slot. It shows up in Computer Management disk drives along with the WDC drive that came with. Populating the drive shows Disk: Disk 1 Type: Dynamic ond online..If I go to ..Storage and Disk Managment Disk 1 shows up as unallocated.I tried to format disk 1 /FS:NTFS /V:dorathy to no avail. How do I get Vista to recongnize this dirve????
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