Reformat External Hard Drive With Operating System
Nov 13, 2011
I have a hard drive I recovered from my old Dell laptop when the motherboard gave out. Originally, I just put it in an external hard case and have been using it as external storage. Now it is getting filled up, so I would like to reformat it to remove the OS partition (Vista) to give me access to the entire drive. I have removed and baked up all my files, but cannot find a way to repartition the drive to remove the OS volume. Disk manager will not let me access that volume to delete it - nor will diskpart. In fact, only the non-OS volume even shows up with a drive letter in diskpart.
I have searched the web but have only been able to find info on how to reformat the main hard drive...and this is definitely NOT what I want to do.
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Nov 28, 2009
Should i flash my bios to get rid of infection
how do i reformat the external hard drive
or what tools can i use.
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Sep 16, 2012
Just recently i had to reformat my computer, i had some pretty personal documents where i placed in a password protected folder. I forgot exactly how i password protected it but to access the file i would click on a file called locker, and a black screen would open up, i would type in the password push enter and the file would appear, then to lock it i just open locker again and push "y".
I had to reformat my computer so copied all the contents that was inside the folder (and not the locker) onto a hard drive and reformmated my computer, however, now i cannot access these files. I can see them but they all say access denied due to permission rights.
I've followed all the security changes ive found and made myself the owner, set security settings to full control etc however, still cannot access these files. They are really important and was wondering if there was a way i can access them again or is there any programs that can unlock them? Ive tried all the programs similar to |unlocker"
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Dec 8, 2009
I currently have windows vista 32 bit on my hard drive. I want to upgrade to windows 7 ultimate, but don't want to format this HD just yet.
Is there a way to load windows 7 onto this hard drive then have that portion of the HD boot up in windows 7? That way I can run windows 7 and still have my windows vista and all my files on the same hard drive.
If windows 7 works out, can I delete that windows vista portion and copy the files into the Windows 7 portion?
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Jan 26, 2012
I came into the possession of a new HP computer, the hard drive has no operating system on it. Is there any way of putting windows XP or Vista on this system without going out and buying them. Are there any operating systems online that can be downloaded?
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Aug 5, 2012
My hard drive is slowing down the preformace of my computer. The hard drive gets a 5.9 rating in windows 7 performance ratings. I would like to switch out to a newer hard drive possibly Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1002FAEX. I do have an external backup drive
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May 2, 2012
I am not very good with computers, so I don't really know how to do this, and need explanation in simple english. My hard drive is constantly causing BSODs on my HP laptop (Windows 7) and I have ordered a new hard drive. I am not quite sure how to transfer the operating system.
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Nov 23, 2011
i cant install operating system on hard drive because hard drive is change to dynamic suggest tome to change dynamic into logical
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Jan 6, 2013
I want to install a new hard drive on my laptop. How can I keep the windows 7 operating system that is now installed on the current hard drive?
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Jan 12, 2013
when you turn it on it flashes the vaio logo then goes to a black screen that says "operating system not found". i googled the problem and my instincts were correct it was a damaged hard drive there is even a Internet video as the first link when you google it and it shows his laptop go figure.
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Jun 15, 2011
So yesterday I was online and uploaded a pic to Twitpic. Everything froze up so after a bit I decided to restart. When it restarted it went right into system repair. I let that run ALL NIGHT LONG. In the morning, it asked if I wanted to do a system restore and I said yes. But it said I had no restore points. I knew that wasn't right so I ran through the memory check option and then the hard drive check and was told memory was fine but now I don't have a hard drive found or an operating system. Any clue what has happened or how to restore everything?
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Jul 5, 2010
is there an easy way to reboot into a different operating system thats on a different harddrive from the desktop?
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Aug 10, 2012
and i got problem with my brothers WD external hard drive, it's not recognized in my computer, my brother says "it lost the drive letter or may be some files broken" he had some knowledge about that but we can't fix that one.
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Aug 15, 2010
I am having issues with my external hard drive. It has been working just fine until today. The drive is showing up and I can access a few folders and fewer files, but the majority of the contents are nowhere to be found. It works without a hitch on every other computer in the house but the main one. Running chkdsk says the drive has a RAW file system and chkdsk can't run. This pc is running Windows 7 32-bit (all the others have Windows 7 64-bit) but no idea why I'm having this issue. Yesterday I installed a new printer, did some windows updates, and had a power outage, so I suspect the problem lies with one of those things. I'm really at a loss here as what to do though.
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Apr 8, 2011
I have discovered that my external hard drive is showing "unknown file system" hence why it will not show anywhere on the computer for instance under disk management or my computer, is there any way to get around this? like can a file system be recovered?
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Jun 29, 2011
I made a few months back a backup of my machine(windows 7 64bit edition). The size was like 25gb's so I saved it on my external hard-drive(I bought a case and put a hard drive(Seagate I think) in it). I know want to use this to restore my computer. So I made a system repair disk and loaded it up. However it cannot find my external hard-drive. I have "WindowsImageBackup " in my root directory of my external drive. Yet it still does not see it. I would install some drivers but I have no clue what drives I need as when I plug it into my computer and I am in windows 7 it finds my drive. What do I need to make window 7 recognize my image?
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Dec 11, 2012
I have a 3 Tera HDD. (WD My Book Essential (USB 3.0)). Last night I uninstalled a software which I do not remember its name by mistake. Apparently it was related to my WD hard drive for my computer does not recognize it anymore. I checked my device manager; "Base System Device" is not recognized. I ran windows troubleshooting. It says "Base System Device" Driver is not found. I searched a lot, but I couldn't find the driver. I also ran drive checker software.
It says:
Device name: JMB38X SD/MMC Host Controller
File name: MSI_GX633_Card For Windows 7.zip
Hardware ID: PCIVEN_197B&DEV_2382
I could not find this too. I also have another portable WD which is still recognized by my computer.
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Mar 28, 2012
my desktop computer won't boot. When I turn it on it displays the welcome splash screen and then goes black. A message will then display that says CMD failed to start and then it will shut down. It does the same thing in safe mode as well.My question is. I have already set up the HD from the desktop as an external to my laptop so I could get files off it. Is there any way to do system restore on the hard drive when it is set as an external? Because I did this last night and I think if I restore the drive it will fix it.
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Feb 24, 2011
I am atempting to install windows 7 and XP on a 500gb disk drive, I also have an 80gb drive with Linux currently running on it. Is there anything that I should do so that I can access all three
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Oct 25, 2012
I have a problem for a Mac formatted WD My Passport external drive. PC recognizes the WD Smartware part of the disk but not the data. I want to reformat the whole drive to Windows 7, but I can't see any options to do that.
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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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Jun 21, 2012
I've ordered new parts for a new computer and I read that I could transfer the license being used on this (current) computer to the new one because I have the full version of Windows not the OEM. I plan on (if possible) transfering my windows 7 license to the new computer/SSD and use this old hard drive for storage/backup. But I'm a little confused/unsure about a few things: 1. Do I install Windows 7 and activate it on the new computer/SSD first and then remove Windows 7 from the old hard drive? Or do I have to remove it from the old computer before attempting to install on the new one, 2. How do I remove Windows from the old drive? I haven't reformatted before but from what I've read from guides, I use the windows CD to reformat, but it reinstalls a clean version of Windows. How would I clean the old drive without reinstalling Windows?
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Sep 4, 2011
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit The windows system image backed up on my external hard drive (2TB WD USB3) is not showing while restoring the PC from an image.
The only option available is my hard drive partition on which i also had saved a system image. Though windows recommends External hard drive for backing up image when backing up the system.
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Jun 14, 2012
I have two hard drives, one is SATA 500gb and the other is IDE 150gb. I had Windows 7 on the SATA and an old Ubuntu on the IDE hard drive. I hardly ever used Ubuntu and got tired of GRUB coming up every time I booted asking which OS I want so I decided to uninstall it. I wanted to go ahead and reformat the drive so I used an old Windows XP cd I have to reformat the 150g IDE drive. It wouldn't let me just reformat without installing XP so I went ahead and did that.So now whenever I turn on the PC it automatically boots into Windows XP. In XP I can see both drives, my 500gb with all my files and Windows 7 and the 150gb with just XP on it. In my BIOS the SATA 500gb is set as the main hdd, and is set as #1 in the boot priority (IDE hdd is not anywhere in boot priority). When I bring up the boot list and choose the SATA HDD it just brings up a BIOS flasher, no Windows 7.
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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 21, 2012
I have installed a new ssd (240GB) into my computer. Everything is currently on a 500GB HDD and I want to transfer all of it (including the op system) to the SSD.
How do I do this and ensure the computer boots from the SSD?
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Sep 3, 2012
I made the mistake of putting W7 on a small partition of the 160GB D drive. I was not aware that much of windows 7 programing would not allow me to change the destination to install and insists on installing on the OS drive. I am looking for a way to copy, move or coerce all of the current system onto another drive without erasing that drive.
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Jul 24, 2012
It starts up saying no operating system then as we delved deeper tried a windows 7 disc and it ended up in dos and found out that it came up as x: drive I assume this is the recovery partition on the drive but tried changing to c: drive not found . The c: drive just seams to of disappeared. Is the hard drive knackered .
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Jan 22, 2012
I have a 1tb HD and I want to partition it to install another operating system. There is no "unallocated space". How do I go about making my partition?
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Feb 11, 2012
My problem is simple. I had 4 HD's in my Computer 2* 500G in Raid as an operating system and 2*1tb drives for storage. Everything was working fine but the OS needed a formatt and refresh basicaally.o to take advantage of this and free up 1TB of space I bought a 64G SSD, physically installed it and went about setting up this as my OS from scratch. However, in my haste I forgot to remove a couple fo folders of important documents from the old OS drives.The SSD is the Boot drive now and I can see all other HD's in my computer, but the problem is I can not gain access to, lets call it H:, which was the old OS drive. I have been able to initiallise one of the old OS raid drives through disk management, but am unable to gain access to H.
It tells me I need to Formatt the drive first, and then comes up with a speil about access being denied. I gather this has to do with the old OS being installed on it, I am happy to formatt the drive enventually. But I really need to get some docs off it first.Is there anyway to do this, I have been searching for an answer but not getting anywhere?I tried to change the boot order also, as all other system specs remain the same. But I think because I have removed the Raid set up of the drives I am unable t load the old OS
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