Hard Drive Formatting

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Guest

I have 4 external H drives and realised that 2 were FAT32 file system which I
wanted to c/o to NTFS. I removed all the data from them but when trying to
format windows tells me they may still be in use or are open in another
window (which is not the case). Anyone know of a simple procedure to ensure
re-format please?

Thanks,
Chrys
 
Are these drives being monitored by System Restore, if so turn off SR for
these drives.
Also try booting to Safe Mode (press F8 key during initial boot) and try
formatting.
Did the drives come with CDs as they may have a format utility on them.

JS
 
Chrys said:
I have 4 external H drives and realised that 2 were FAT32 file system which
I
wanted to c/o to NTFS. I removed all the data from them but when trying to
format windows tells me they may still be in use or are open in another
window (which is not the case). Anyone know of a simple procedure to
ensure
re-format please?

Thanks,
Chrys
Click to expand...


Chrys:
First of all, close any open programs including any anti-virus or other
anti-malware program that may be running in the background. This also
includes Windows Explorer and any other Windows program you may have
running.

You are referring to USB external hard drives, right? I assume the external
HDD listed in Disk Management, yes?

Can you right-click on its listing and select Format from the sub-menu? If
Format is grayed-out is there a menu item for Delete Partition? Can you use
that and then partition/format the drive?
Anna
 
DL said:
You can convert to nfts without formatting, see win help
Click to expand...

JS/DL,
folks, thanks for the speedy response(s). I'll check out, when I get home.
JS, the drives are USB plug'n'play so are diskless.
I'll let you know, but replies very much appreciated,
rgds,
Chrys
 
To ALL who have replied : thanks so much, the problem is 80% resolved.
I used the [format] command in disk manager but had to "force" it to
format as it advised that the drive was in use (though it wasn't as
far as I could see). So far so good.
I'm not a frequent visitor to disk manager so don't know it's
benefits. However, I did notice that my C drive has 2.4 Gb allocated
to Recovery (FAT 32), 125GB (NTFS), and a further 62GB marked as
"Unallocated". Is it possible to transfer all the data to another
drive, re-format C, and import the data back? [Without, of course,
messing up everything (Operationally speaking !)] I presume an
unallocated segment of drive C is common?

Thanks,
Chrys
Click to expand...


The 2.4G FAT32 'Recovery' partition is typically there when your PC comes
from a large OEM that doesn't supply you with a Windows CD.

125G is obviously the main system partition.

62G though marked as un-allocated ? That's odd. There's usually a very
small amount of unallocated space, like 8 Megs or so.
 
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