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Thread: can't format my external hard drive

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
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    3,522

    can't format my external hard drive

    Previously I was having a Windows XP computer but due to some problems with the motherboard I finally bought a new HP Desktop computer that came with Window Vista pre-installed. Since the hard drive of the XP OS were working fine, I installed it on Vista by using en external usb closure and then copied all the data from it in the new hard drive. After that I tried to unpartition the old hard drive by using the Disk Management tool in vista, but and removed all the volumes and deleted all the partitions as well successfully. After only having 1 memory chuck labeled as primary drive I again went to format the drive to create a new parition but I started getting errors saying that either the formatting was not completed or not successful. The drive gets listed in my computer but i am not able to use it because it cant be still formatted. Can anyone help me with this issue. Thanks

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Posts
    392
    I think that you need to make a new partition in order to use the hard drive before formatting it. You should first connect your old hard drive directly on the motherboard ide or sata port on your new desktop pc and check from their whether you are able to work with the hard drive or not. If the hard drive is still not working from their then there might some issues with it and the hard drive could be also bad possibly. Have you tried creating a partition and format with the disk management or tried some other method?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
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    3,522
    I have tried creating a new partition but that didnt work. I also put that old drive by connecting it inside my new hp desktop machine and tried to quick format the drive, but am still getting that same error, also with a regular formating, it isnt working. I dont think that this drive is bad because if it was then it wouldnt had been recognized in the drive in the very first place. Any more help.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    518
    Can you try to delete all the old partitions from the old drive and then create a new partition and then again format the same one. Check if this time it is working or not. I have seen people who were facing similar kind of problem with their drive and were able to solve it easily. What they did was, they deleted the partition from the disk management and then created a new volume on the same disk and restricted the size of the parition to about 2-3% and that solved their issue. Hope that this will help you out.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    1

    Re: can't format my external hard drive

    I also want to add what helped me if people are still having problems, change your drive letter and then format in wbfs manager. what caused me not to be able to format was a cheap enclosure kit which causes my EH to read at times as if its not connected for whatever reason and while i was copying sonic and sega all stars to my EH it just stopped reading it as connected and made wbfs 3.0.1 go crazy

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