How to salvage these drives?

Diddums · 2 Mar 2019 at 20:44

I stripped 2x WD Green 2tb drives out of a knackered NAS. I can't see them in Windows, but I suspect this is due to the NAS being used by Apple.

They show up in various applications but I can't find them in Explorer, so I assume I need to start from scratch and initialise them (from a bit of googling).

Anyone got a step by step guide on how to get these drives usable?

Thanks

UnworthyBean · 2 Mar 2019 at 21:02

Have a look in disk management to see if they're in there, you should be able to format them in there and then use them as normal. Everything on the drive will be lost though.

Diddums · 2 Mar 2019 at 21:16

UnworthyBean said:
Have a look in disk management to see if they're in there, you should be able to format them in there and then use them as normal. Everything on the drive will be lost though.

They show up, but all the options are greyed out, can't click on anything. Will this "GPT Protective Partition" have anything to do with it you think?

bremen1874 · 2 Mar 2019 at 21:27

DISKPART at the command line should allow you to do the things you can't at the moment.

Google 'DISKPART' and you'll find guides on its use. Just be careful you don't accidentally select and clear the wrong drive.

UnworthyBean · 2 Mar 2019 at 21:33

As above, it will probably need diskpart to do the trick quick Google and found this guide which should do the trick.

Edit - that wasn't meant to sound condescending suggesting that you Google it yourself. Just meant there are probably better guides.

Diddums · 3 Mar 2019 at 18:29

bremen1874 said:
DISKPART at the command line should allow you to do the things you can't at the moment.

Google 'DISKPART' and you'll find guides on its use. Just be careful you don't accidentally select and clear the wrong drive.

UnworthyBean said:
As above, it will probably need diskpart to do the trick quick Google and found this guide which should do the trick.

Edit - that wasn't meant to sound condescending suggesting that you Google it yourself. Just meant there are probably better guides.

Thanks both, worked perfectly, I now have 2x 2tb Green drives for nada