Question Hard Disk: XFS to NTFS

American2021

Commendable
Jul 24, 2021
5
0
1,510
I have a 1TB hard drive formatted in XFS. There is no data on the drive, nothing needs to be recovered.

I want to remove the XFS and format it with NTFS to use in Windows 10.

I wish to use this hard drive as an NTFS drive in Windows 10.

How can I accomplish this?

-American2021
 

American2021

Commendable
Jul 24, 2021
5
0
1,510
That was easy. I took a spare computer and:

  1. Unplugged all hard drives (removed data and power cables from each hard drive).
  2. Plugged in the XFS hard drive (attached a data and power cable to the XFS hard drive).
  3. Booted from an old Windows XP install CD and deleted the unknown partition, then F3 out and restart.
  4. Unplugged the unformatted hard drive (removed data and power cable).
  5. Plugged the unformatted hard drive into my primary Windows 10 computer and turned on the computer.
  6. Went to Disk Management (right click This PC, then left click on Manage, then left click on Disk Management).
  7. Identified the new hard unformatted hard drive and formatted it with NTFS.
The old XP install CD can delete Linux partitions off hard drives so they can be used in Windows.

Obviously, be sure to unplug any existing hard drives from the computer you're using before booting from the old XP CD!
 
Last edited:

American2021

Commendable
Jul 24, 2021
5
0
1,510
Connect the disk to the pc.
Open file explorer and right click the disk.
Select format.

Did not work. When I plugged the XFS drive in, several new drive letters appeared in File Explorer and a window for each drive letter appeared asking me to format for each drive letter. I clicked format and after a few seconds my computer froze forcing a hard reboot.

It appears that Windows doesn't support the XFS file system. If you connect an XFS drive to a Windows computer, it isn't recognized by Windows enough to reformat the drive.

That's when I reached for an old Windows XP CD to boot from and then deleted the XFS partition off the hard drive rendering it perfectly usable in Windows 10 :).

Of course, I unplugged all drives except the XFS drive from the computer I used before booting from the Windows XP CD!