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View Full Version : formatting external sata hdd???

Bourbon Thret
03-28-2006, 12:34 PM
hello there,

i have aquired a 250g maxtor maxline II hdd from my work for a greatly discounted price. my boss was using it as part of a RAID.

when i plug it into my pc (via USB cable in external case) it isn't being seen by my computer.

on my work pc it is listed as unreadable in device manager, and when i tried it at home device manager doesnt see it at all.

so, anyone have a good tip on formating this thing? i have to do it as an external drive as my home pc wont take SATA.

my boss is too busy to do it for me anytime soon so i would like to do it myself if i could...

any help would be appreciated.

cheers
lots
03-28-2006, 12:52 PM
Open control panel and go to administrator tools.
Double click on computer management.
hit the + next to Storage
Click on "Disk Management"
The SATA disk should be listed as an unknown partition, or something similar. Just right click on it on the list and hit format, it should bring you through a few msgs and away it goes.

Be sure that you are in fact going to format the correct thing. If you bought a prebuilt system, often there is a small (anywhere from 32MB to 300MB partition that windows does not understand. This is where your systme builder stores various diagnostic tools.
Buddski
03-28-2006, 01:38 PM
or try swissknife utilities - a nice litle disk management app that can help sort out those tricky hd setups - works nice on external harddrives - or those nasty ipod hard drives u get sometimes (if you ever need to replace the hd in your mp3 player)
Bourbon Thret
03-29-2006, 07:11 AM
hello,

i already tried the manager. when i right click the drive i dont have option to format.

also, swissknife had a read/write error when i tried to click on the drive.

thanks for help anyway...

any more ideas???
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03-29-2006, 07:11 AM
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