Working External Drive - Win7 Wants To Format It
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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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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Jan 14, 2010
i've purchased a seagate 1TB external hard drive and need to format it in FAT32 format.
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Dec 26, 2009
So I was not sure about Windows 7 and I have a PC with 2 physically separate internal hard drives. So I retained my vista OS on my C:/ drive (named OS) and did a clean install of windows 7 (using an upgrade disc student edition) on my D:/ drive (DATA).
After setting up, using and liking windows 7, I want to eliminate my vista system, which is boated now, completely. However, apparently with an intel chipset, I can't simply format the OS drive using the disc management utility, even though when I boot windows 7, it is renamed the D:/ drive because the bootloader is on the OS drive. I have tried changing the DATA drive to an active, bootable drive in disc manager. Unfortunately, I can't seem to make it the primary partition.
Originally found this forum on google with a hit on help: cannot reformat c drive
useful information, but I am not completely sure what it means.
After spending about a week customizing my Windows 7 install, I am not too happy about the possibility having to reinstall on the OS drive and go from there. What method should I use to format my OS drive, and still be able to boot the DATA drive. I would then like to use my OS drive for storing music, and pictures, etc.
I have an external HD to work with. I suppose I could image the DATA drive with the Windows 7 install, format the OS drive, and then restore the image to the C drive, but that still leaves the problem of how to format the OS drive in the first place. Also, I've never done a recovery from image before, and am not big on the prospect.
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Oct 20, 2009
Is there a way I can remove all the partitions from my Hard drive and do a full format (not quick)? The windows 7 install disc does a quick format but I would like to clean it thoroughly. Is there a utility I can use at boot time to do this?
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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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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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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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Jun 28, 2012
my laptop's net is not working after format c drive.
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Apr 28, 2012
I have a 1TB WD external drive that i was still using until last week when it failed to open. It shows in My Computer as a drive letter J but it doesn't show the usual capacity and free space. Disk management detects it though. Then opening the drive gives me the message that the drive needs to be reformatted before it can be used. I don't want to loose the 900GB files I have in it so I tried some recovery programs like Wondershare but it only recovered 10GB of my files.
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Dec 27, 2009
Got a Acer laptop with Windows 7 for Christmas and previous had a computer with Windows XP. I had a external hard drive that when ever I connect to the computer it is automatically detected and will come up in My Computer. I went to connect my external drive last night and nothing as happened apart from whenever I connected the computer made a noise that something had been connected but there is nothing in My Computer.
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Sep 11, 2012
my external hard rive is not accessible. cannot format it either. i am using windows 7
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Feb 7, 2012
What are the pros and cons of formatting an external drive in Windows 7 vs. Windows XP?
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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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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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Feb 8, 2013
how i can format my pen drive if window 7 and XP is unable to format it. they are saying files are in use. i have kept window xp, photoshop and some other software in it. Now please tell me how can i delete these items or format it.
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Sep 10, 2011
I have a problem someone here might be able to throw some light on.
I am trying to format an external 80gb hdd in fat 32, and it keeps stopping saying "hdd too large" i have tried different ways with no joy
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Sep 3, 2012
My 1TB external hard drive worked just fine. I used to store there everything. It was using NTFS file system. Last week I connected it to my laptop and it was really slow when I tried to move or delete files from my pc to the drive. I disconnected and reconnected it to my laptop. Suddenly, it said that I had to format it! I couldn't even access it neither the files in it. I managed to take some of the files to my laptop using recovery software and they are now safe. I thought the trouble would be gone now. I thought now I would just format it and store my files again. I was wrong. I can't even format it!
I tried disk management, cmd, almost everything. I downloaded various programs to run tests and try to write everything zeros. Turned out quitting that cause it tells me it needs a lot of hours. So, I tried a different approach that I was so stupid not to have tried yet. I tried formatting in other file system. I tried and it worked, well, almost... I can only successfully format it to exFat with the 'quick format' option enabled. If that option isn't enabled or I try to format it to NTFS, the formatting process takes forever or crashes. I would stay with my HDD formatted to exFat, but it is too slow..
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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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Nov 28, 2012
How can I recover my datafrom my External HDD which asking me to format
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Dec 18, 2009
I recently got a new laptop, a Dell Vostro 1520 with Windows 7. I'm in the process of transferring all my files from my old laptop to the new one and while setting up my Zune software I realized it wouldn't play any of my music that I keep in my external harddrive. I've tried to play my music on Windows Media Player as well and I'm having no luck there as well. Can anyone help me out?
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May 21, 2012
I am trying to format my 1.5Tb Samsung external HDD using Windows XP X64.I tried using port E and F.Formatting goes on for upto 7 hours,progress bar gets to end and I get the 'can't complete format' message.I am a computing dummy, how to get this done correctly and successfuly.
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Jan 27, 2013
I recently backed up about 500gb of recent work onto an external drive so I could clean my PC inside and out. I gave it a clean install of windows 7 and when it comes time to get my work of my external, the drive cannot be recognized and requires a reformat.It was working perfectly fine and I surely did not format the drive into a RAW file system. I tried plugging into my laptop running win8 and still the very same issue. I plugged it into a mac running the lastest mac os 10 and I can browse all my folders and see the files but I can't move/copy or open them. But at least I know all is not lost.
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Oct 22, 2012
I have Adata External Hard Disk which has data in it but it is asking asking to format it.
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Nov 10, 2012
I recently switched from a Mac to a PC. I cloned my system partition of my PC to my external hard disk, and I only realized later that the external HDD was in a Mac OS extended (journaled) format. I thought I would have to format that partition as NTFS and re-clone afterwards. I tried to remove that partition using Disk Utilities on my Mac but got an error message. Surprisingly, though, when I connected the external HDD to my PC, I can access that partition under My Computer, and when I open Disk Management that partition is listed as NTFS.
1) How can I tell if the cloned partition on my external HDD is ok?
2) Should I reformat it and start from scratch instead?
3) If so, should I be making an image OR a clone of my system disk (so that I can boot from my external HDD and restore my system if my internal HDD fails)?
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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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Jul 10, 2009
All of the forums and postings say you can't upgrade from XP to Windows 7. I bet you can in the following scenario...
"Borrow" a Vista Upgrade Disk (any flavor above Basic). Upgrade XP to Vista w/o entering a key. Within the 30 day "keyless" grace period, upgrade Vista to Windows 7 using any flavor of Upgrade Disk entering the Windows 7 upgrade key. You may get some issues in the compatibility check but they can probably be worked around.
Since there are no Windows 7 Retail Disks to try this out on, this can't be verified.
This also assumes that there is something to be gained by upgrading from XP. My advice..... Do a clean install.
Tell me why this wouldn't work if you know that for sure.
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