External Disk Drive

[Klippy]

Hello,
I have a Hitachi 1T external hard drive. It says that the disk is healthy but RAW. There is nothing on the drive that I care to save but i would like to format it to work with windows 7. I have tried the quick format and it says that windows cannot complete the format. Any suggestions? With money so tight now days if I can use this hard drive for my audio books and the such I would really love to.

 

[Paperdoc]

Do you know how to access and use Disk Management? If not, post here and we can help you.

BUT assuming you can get into Disk Management, go to its LOWER RIGHT pane and scroll to the Hitachi drive. RIGHT-click on its Partition that shows as having a RAW File System, and Delete the Partition. Since you don't want to try saving any old data on it, IF there are any other Partitions on the drive, delete them also.

Now you have an empty HDD just like brand new. RIGHT-click on the Unallocated Space and choose to Initialize the drive. I assume you will want to have ALL of the space as ONE Partition, so make sure that's the size you ask for. Make this a Primary Partition, and it does NOT need to be bootable since it is for data only. Choose the NTFS File System. It probably will default to doing a Full Format, which does a thorough test of the drive. This version of Format takes several HOURS to do, but the testing is a good safety move. When the process is finished, back out of Disk Management and reboot so that Windows can update the Registry. Your drive should be usable now.

 

[UnoNO09]

You perhaps need a format tool:
http://en.softonic.com/s/usb-format-software

 

[Klippy]

I can get to computer management and I see disk management on the right hand side but I am not sure where to find the Hitachi Drive. I see in the middle of the screen my drives. I know I sound so computer dumb.

 

[Paperdoc]

In Disk Management on the right-hand side there are two panes, Upper and Lower. Each of them Scrolls so you can see all they have.


The Upper Right pane shows you all the storage devices Windows now has and knows how to use. The Lower Right pane shows you those same, although with a little different info, PLUS any other hardware units that Windows does not understand. Since you say, "It says that the disk is healthy but RAW", I assume you saw this in that Lower Right pane. But maybe not.

In that pane, each storage device is represented by one wide rectangular box. Within that box the left-hand end has a bit of info on the unit itself: for a HDD, you'll see a label like "Disk 1", a type like "Basic", a size like "930 GB", and a status like "Online". To the right there will be one or more rectangles each representing one Partition. In each there will be more info. (If there are NO partitions defined on this HDD, there will be only one block labelled "Unallocated Space".) The info in each Partition shows: a name for this Partition that was assigned when Formatted, like "MyDisk", a letter name like D: , a size in GB, a File System (normally "NTFS", but in this case probably "RAW"), and a status like "Healthy" or not.

You should be looking in that Lower Right pane for a big rectangle with a HDD size of about 930 GB (That's how Windows calls a 1TB unit). My guess is that it has one (maybe more, but maybe not) Partition block on the right that says its File System is RAW. That is the Partition I recommend you Delete by RIGHT-clicking on it and choosing from the mini-menu. If there are any other Partitions in THIS UNIT ONLY - NOT OTHERS!! Delete them also so that the entire HDD area is Unallocated Space. THEN right-click and choose to Initialize, etc.