Format HD ??

pmanton

pmanton

Final Approach
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I have a 2 TB that was formatted with Dish Network's proprietary formatting to store movies.
I want to return it its original formatting. Of course Windows won't recognize it. I tried Western Digital's Data Lifeguard to erase it. I got an error with no erasure. (It is a WD drive)

The drive is recognized at the Command prompt. I had no luck formatting that way.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks:

Paul
Salome, AZ.
 
Probably you have to delete and recreate the disk's partition(s) first.
 
A new 2TB drive is about $50. Disk drives don't last forever. I wouldn't store anything I cared about on a heavily-used, repurposed drive.
 
What version of windows do you have? There's a tool called "disk management", in windows 10 you can type "partition" in the search box and a "create and manage disk partitions" option will come up. You may be able to view your hard drive in there and delete the old partition(I think windows calls them volumes) and create a new one. May or may not work right with this drive but it's something you already have so worth a try. Other versions of windows have this too I just don't remember off the top of my head how to get to it.
 
I have done this before using AOMEI Partition Manager. https://www.aomeitech.com/ The free version is all you need. Plug the drive into your laptop. Kill the existing partition and create another. Then use AOMEI to Format. AOMEI will recognize the drive whereas Windows may not until you reformat. You should be able to do in Linux as well if you know the Linux commands.
 
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