My External drive (1.5T) won't format, seems "lost"

Antx777 · 4 Sep 2010 at 01:14

Hello, i recently had a Seagate Seagate Expansion 1.5TB from overclockers https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-228-SE and i did a back up on it yesterday - all fine. However, windows - (all of a sudden it seems) won't let me access it. It's "local Disk N", and when i click it it says: "you need to format this disk before yo ucan use it" So i clicked "Quick Format", only to have a prompt " (after the format warning) "WINDOWS WAS UNABLE TO COMPLETE THE FORMAT"

The capacity says 875 GB (back-up was about 145 gig BTW)
File system: NTFS (Default)
Allocation size: 4096 MB

a Right click on the Hard drive say "used space 0 bytes free space 0 bytes" nothing :confused:

TIA for any help

Running Windows 7 64 bit OS

Ant

Antx777 · 4 Sep 2010 at 01:44

Yes it does Stulid unnder "disk management" there are FIVE Boxes: 867GB (Unallocated)/ 259GB (Healthy Primary partition) <two of these then "875 GB" Healty (Primary partition) then one with my drive letter "N" "875 GB ACTIVE, Primary Partition" and finally a small MB one (27 megs - healthy primary)

I don't need the data from it Alex, as it was just a backup, and still have the original on my pc . will try that thanks.

Ant

Antx777 · 4 Sep 2010 at 01:52

Thanks Guys

, did it by Deleting the volume (875GB Active), then the other ones, then creating a "new Simple Volume" Then formatting it. All ok now as its next to my C drive as normal accessable, so thank you

Edit: it begs the question though, supposing my "all-important-data" was on that drive - and no other, would it been "recoverable" (by some advanced software (acronis/paragon etc)?

~Ant

Antx777 · 4 Sep 2010 at 13:47

bledd. said:
When you say you 'did a backup on it', what did you use for this?

Did you originally format it as an NTFS drive using all the space of the drive?

I did a Windows 7 "system image" backup. I didn't format it though (only had it 2 week), so maybe it wasn't quite "NTSF"-ready?, I will always do TWO backups from now on on two seperate Externals. Western Digital is one i use (750 gig) and seems VERY reliable.

Thanks alex re: backup software advise..

Ant