Best Way To Format External Hard Drive Used For Backup
Nov 8, 2009
I am acquiring a 1.5TB external drive. I will be basically have a single 1.5TB file on this drive. It will be a Truecrypt encrypted archive.
Given that the entire hard disk will be occuppied with one huge file, what is the best way to format it? Is NTFS still the way to go? Does it make sense to increase the cluster size above the 4KB default?
I am concerned about both performance and not wasting space, but the performance is the lesser concern.
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Apr 19, 2012
my external hard drive (WD elements 1TB) has recently shrewd up after i formatted it. it has nothing on it not even a partition or format i added a partition using disk manger but i wont format it says format was unable to complete or something like that and it removes the partition that i just put on it i then partitioned it again but chose not to format and it had a drive letter and showed up as local drive in my computer when i looked at the format it just said RAW that is as far as i can get to getting it working?
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Apr 29, 2012
my external hard drive will only do a quick format not a full?
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Oct 5, 2012
I want format my external drive. But i cannot be format my external hard drive.
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Mar 23, 2012
750 Samsung portable device. Problems seems to sort itself out eventually but it keeps firing up prompts to format the drive before I can use it. First time it happened I had to unplug it, restarted and then it was OK. It just did it again and then again when I restarted, took a minute or two but eventually it read the drive and it was ok. Why is this happening and what can I do to stop it? Might it be a power issue? I have the device connected via a USB 2.0 port, through an extension lead and then through a 4 way splitter. I have had problems with this splitter before I think, but not with the small connector. Maybe I can try connecting it through one of the other ports and see if it still has the same problem.
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Apr 20, 2012
How to open external hard drive without format
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Oct 1, 2012
I'm trying to backup my data on my laptop to an external hard drive. Windows isn't recognizing it for some reason.
The laptop is an HP running windows 7 and the hard drive is an Eagle Cansus. Using the windows commands in the control panel don't seem to help.
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Oct 10, 2012
I have been using a commercial company to back up my computer for the last 2 years. Now I have decided to do my own backups. I already did the first back up to the external drive. Now its time to back up again, when I back up again, will everything be backed up again? Or just the files that have changed?
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Jan 19, 2012
I am running "windows backup and restore" on one of my external hard drives and WDsmartware (western digital software that came with my other external drive). WDsmartware eats up WAY to much resources. Would I be better off just using "windows backup and restore" for both drives? are there any free programs out there that are "better' than windows 7 "backup and restore"?
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Dec 21, 2012
I'd like to automatically backup certain folders to an external hard drive every time it's plugged in. I've tried Windows 7 Backup tool but it creates an icon and I would like the folder to be able to be navigatable (for the reason that I need to know what has been backed up and what hasn't, also I don't want to restore an entire folder at times, sometimes I just want to restore a couple of files).
How can I make this happen? Using either Windows 7 backup or another tool
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Apr 17, 2011
I'm looking for an external hard drive to backup all of my documents that can do the following:Say I have the hard drive already. I have all of my documents on my laptop and a copy of each of them in the hard drive. When I finished writing a new document and plug in the external hard drive, the hard drive will automatically detect that I have a new document and will make a copy of that document in the external. The hard drive will also automatically copy and replace any new version of the existed older documents.
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Dec 10, 2012
Can you backup installed applications to an external hard drive, then restore them to another Computer without Reinstalling them? For example, My computer Windows 7 Home Premium has many softwares, applications, programs, utilities, etc. That I purchased and don't want to Reinstall them on new computer. Is it possible for them to work without Re-entry keys?
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Nov 16, 2011
Last week I've reinstalled my Windows 7 because my notebook was slow and I wanted to went back to the factory setting. I've picked my Seagate external HD (2TB) and moved everything I had into a folder called "[Acer]".
Well, I had some problems with external hard drives this year, I've lost many information from an external HD, and I found out that it was because I've connected this HD in a Macintosh. I really DON'T KNOW WHY, but every folder that I had opened in my Macintosh went CORRUPTED in Windows 7, with no chances to repair the files.
Since then, I haven't plugged my external hard drives into my Macintosh.
I don't know if it's a Windows 7 problem or a problem with my Seagate HD, but the quantity of issues that I had with this external HD since then was crazy. Every time I disconnected this HD and then connected again, Windows asked me to repair and scan the files. And the amount of time to scan everything was, like, one and a half hour... so it was bugging me a lot. But the real problem is: yesterday I've plugged my external HD and my backup folder (called "[Acer]" simply disappeared from the drive. I've tried to run "chkdsk E: /F", with no success.
Now I'm running a "chkdsk E: /R", and it will take me a lot of time, and I'm really not positive to recover my backup folder.
All the old folders are there, everything is fine, but this folder disappeared, only this folder (and everything that were inside of it) disappeared.
I've also tried Recuva (Recuva - Download) to recover my folder, but it haven't found it.
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Jan 14, 2010
i've purchased a seagate 1TB external hard drive and need to format it in FAT32 format.
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May 25, 2012
I'm running Windows 7 64x Home Premium on a Toshiba Qosmio X505 laptop. I just got it back from the warranty repair center, where they replaced the hard drive and graphics fan & heatsink, and reloaded the factory windows version. Before I sent it out for repair, I used Windows Backup to create a backup of all my files on a Toshiba casio 500GB external USB drive (I had over 300 GB of files, so it was easier to use Windows Backup than drag and drop all the files, at least at the time). Now that I have the laptop back, I'm having trouble restoring my files. When I go to Control Panel-> Backup & Restore, a message appears in the restore section, saying "Windows could not find a backup for this computer." I've tried reconnecting the drive as well as restarting my computer, but to no avail. I can see and explore the files in My Computer, so I know the hard drive is properly connected.
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Aug 29, 2012
Can I format a Hard Drive with Windows 7 using a 2000 format disk. If so, what are the prompts i see and action on boot-up before I use the format C. Done it before but just forgot
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Nov 9, 2012
what should i do, when i unable to format my external and when i click on xternal it appears the parameter is incorrect
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Oct 30, 2012
Am unable to read or write in my hard disk.. every time it shows msg saying not accessible. i tried to format but even that is not happening. i tried using cmd prompt. but no use.
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Oct 23, 2011
.I didn't wait for the computer to tell me it was ok to remove the drive in the usb port. Now my computer no longer recognizes the external drive After removing my external hard drive (without the ok) my computer no longer recognizes the external hard drive. What do I do.
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Dec 20, 2012
I have a new Dell with windows 7 and I have three external hard drives which I use on three other machines with xp pro one them. This machine will not open these drives and demands a format. They work perfect on my other machines
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Oct 21, 2011
I'm trying to backup Windows 7 to an external HD that currently is used to backup mac.eed to do to make this happen? I'm sure I'll have to format the ext HD then backup the mac using a different file format, but am unsure just what I'll have to do or how to do it.
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Dec 9, 2011
I have Asus N55SF laptop, with Windows 7 SP1 64 bit. Also, I have 2 external hard drives. One with USB 3.0, and one USB 2.0. Following problems, I am going to describe below, happen to the both of them. Just to mention, external drives are tested on desktop computer and following problems do not happen.
Let me now describe what happens when I try certain actions:
- When I try to copy large files (10 or more GB) I get an error that destination is no longer visible. External drives disappear from My Computer and I can't do safe remove. But when I copy files using programs FastCopy or TeraCopy everything copies well and drives do not disappear.
- When I try to do Windows Backup and encrypt them using BitLocker drives also disappear, and are not visible within OS.
There is a difference between external hard with USB 3.0 port and the one with 2.0 port:
- When one with 3.0 disappears after described actions I can't see it from Device Manager, I can see it only after windows reboot. USB 3.0 disk connects to one USB 3.0 port on laptop.
- When one with 2.0 port disappears I can see it from Device Manager, and I only have to unplug it, and plug it in again to see it. USB 2.0 disk connects to 2 USB 2.0 ports on laptop.
Common to both disks is that when then disappear from My computer the diode on the external disk cases are still flashing, what probably means that they have some power. Both disk are formated to NTFS, and Allocation unit size is set to: Default. Their removal policy is set to: Better performance (default). On laptop I only have Windows, Office and Asus drivers. Antivirus is: MSE.
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Oct 29, 2009
Today I upgraded my 64 bit Vista Ultimate to 32 bit Seven Ultimate (retail). I did it by using the DVD to boot up and do a custom install as it wouldn't do a standard upgrade cos of the 32 bit/64 bit clash.
Anyway, it worked smoothly up until I go to my external hard drive to look at some old photos. I plug it in and it gets recognised, but then I get told that it needs formatting before it can be used. No way am I doing that!
I check the hard drive on another machine running XP and the drive is fine.
Any idea what's going on?
Perhaps I should just format the C drive and do a completely clean re-install of Seven?
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May 11, 2012
how can i make a backup/ system image for my internal and external hard drives at the same time?
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Jun 29, 2012
can u backup your data (or an system image)to an internal and external hard drives at the same time?
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Mar 30, 2012
I have an internal hard disk not in use ,and I would like to make it as external disk !I looked on the net and I found I should have the " encelsure " butt I think I wont find it here in my city .So is there another way ? like usb -esata cable
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Mar 4, 2010
Me and my brother built me a new computer from scratch (he did the building - i did the watching). I purchased an internal hard drive from Overclockers UK. It's a Samsung 1TB drive. I also have a 64 Solid-state drive in there as my primary hard drive that Windows was installed on and a couple of programs are installed on. My storage disk (the 1TB disk) is for all my music/films etc. Whenever I drag and drop a file into the Samsung hard-drive - it copies it rather than moves it instantly.When I had a laptop, I had 3 external hard drives and this is the way it copied files onto them.how I can get the internal drive to stop acting like an external drive?
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Nov 27, 2012
I have a Buffalo HD-LB3 3TB external harddrive. My main goal is to get it to work with my xbox 360. I was able to get it to work on my blueray player but it is not found by my Xbox. I have formatted it to Fat32 and I have partitioned it into two pieces, 1.8 TB and 1.1 TB. Still nothing is working.
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May 15, 2012
My external backup drive is a SimpleTech StorageSync unit used with an XP OS. I recently purchased a Dell 64 bit desktop. Can I just connect the backup drive to the new PC or should I make other adjustments?
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Jan 5, 2012
Windows backup is set up to not allow backups onto the C drive (or whatever drive windows is installed on), which generally makes sense. But I have a C drive with a lot of empty space, and an external hard drive that I need to back up. So... is there any way to get around the default behavior so I can back up FROM the external drive TO the C drive?
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Feb 3, 2012
how do i move my backup files from my external hard drive called a network to my pc
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