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Reformat WD external drive

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exdragon
Resolved

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 11:50AM

Hi - the title says what I want to do as it was causing a problem. I've copied everything onto another drive and a friend told me to not to just do a quick format, but instead to do one which looks at every sector. However, when I right click the drive in My Computer, the only options are Quick format and Enable compression.

I've got XP and the drive is NTFS, unpartitioned. Do you think a quick format will be ok, or is there another option lurking somewhere which will do the equivlalent of a brillo pad job?

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mgmcc

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 12:03PM

Open a Command Prompt window ("Start > Run", type cmd and click OK) and, at the prompt, type...

format x: /fs:ntfs

[where "x" is the drive letter of the external drive]

...and press Enter. The drive must already have a single partition or you wouldn't have been able to use it.

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rawprawn

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 12:04PM

Go into Admin tools / disk management / and format from there.

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exdragon

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 12:05PM

Thank you - I thought there must be something somewhere!

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exdragon

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 12:23PM

Rawprawn - that only gives the options of quick format or enable file and folder compression.

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rawprawn

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 1:10PM

I'm surprised, but thanks for telling me. RP

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canarieslover

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 1:41PM

Try Western Digital support - Support page I recently had to reformat and run diagnostics for a friends Passport external drive and I did a full format on that.

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rawprawn

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 4:02PM

I formatted my WD "My Book" twice using the method I suggested, like canarieslover I had no problems.

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woodchip

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 4:57PM

Yes a Quick Format, But First do a Full Disc Check using Disc Checker under My Computer, Double Click My Computer then Right Click the Drive/Properties/Tools Disc Check and tick the box to do a full check. In old Win98 you could not do a Format if the Drive had Problems, It made you do it like the above, disc check then Formate

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exdragon

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 5:22PM

woodchip - the options in Tools are Automatically fix file system errors or scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors - do I pick the second option? And then do the quick format?

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woodchip

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Posted June 9, 2011 at 9:25PM

yes

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