The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Can't Format External Hard Drive

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Xero, Jun 20, 2010.

  1. Xero

    Xero Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    19
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    31
    My friend gave me his 3.5' hard drive from his DVR because he upgraded it from a 500GB to a 1TB. So I decided to use it has an external hard drive using this dock. Anyways, whenever it connects it is successful and all but it comes out like this. None of these drives are clickable (says insert drive).

    I also can't format from disk management because it is not listed in the list.
     
    Xero, Jun 20, 2010
    #1
  2. davidt1

    davidt1 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    13
    Messages:
    347
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    The drive might have to be initialized first.
     
    davidt1, Jun 20, 2010
    #2
  3. Xero

    Xero Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    19
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    31
    What does that mean?
     
    Xero, Jun 20, 2010
    #3
  4. davidt1

    davidt1 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    13
    Messages:
    347
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I had a problem with an external hard drive recently. Disk management saw the drive, but wouldn't let me format or change drive letter until I click on the "initialize drive" option. I thought perhaps the same thing might be happening with your external drive, or not.
     
    davidt1, Jun 21, 2010
    #4
  5. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

    Reputations:
    3,300
    Messages:
    7,115
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    206
    The drives won't show up in Explorer if they're not also visible in the Disk Management somehow.
     
    Pitabred, Jun 21, 2010
    #5
  6. beige

    beige Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    105
    Messages:
    779
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    30
    try disk utility , or format it on any any windows to fat32 and then reformat it on mac to mac journaled :D
     
    beige, Jun 21, 2010
    #6
  7. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    801
    Messages:
    3,881
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Many DVR set top boxes use Linux or ReactOS as their operating system with a custom disk partition layout and an encrypted filesystem to enforce DRM on recorded programs.

    If the stock windows disk manager won't format/re-partition the drive, you might have to use a linux-based bootable disk partition tool like gpartd, pmagic, or clonezilla (among many many others) to completely re-write the MBR of the disk drive. If successful, and once the MBR has been rewritten to a standard windows value, you should be able to format the drive like any other.

    The bootable linux tools I mentioned can all format to Windows NTFS. So you might want to consider using one of those tools to do the whole job.
     
    newsposter, Jun 21, 2010
    #7