how format USB drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jtsnow
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jtsnow

I have a USB external hard drive for back up. It was formatted by a Linux
server and now when I plug it into my USB on my Windows XP PC, it wont see
the drive. It recoginzes there is a HD there, but it doesnt show up at all
as external storage in the drive list.

How do I go about formatting the external drive via USB?

thanks for any tip!
 
jtsnow said:
I have a USB external hard drive for back up. It was formatted by a Linux
server and now when I plug it into my USB on my Windows XP PC, it wont see
the drive. It recoginzes there is a HD there, but it doesnt show up at all
as external storage in the drive list.

How do I go about formatting the external drive via USB?

thanks for any tip!
Click to expand...

My Computer > right click on drive in question > select format? That is
what I do anyway. You can also get to similar but more powerful
funtionality via My Computer > manage > Disk Management if the first
option doesn't work for you. This second path allows you to work with
raw unformatted drives so it should be able to handle whatever you throw
at it.
 
I have a USB external hard drive for back up. It was formatted by a Linux
server and now when I plug it into my USB on my Windows XP PC, it wont see
the drive. It recoginzes there is a HD there, but it doesnt show up at all
as external storage in the drive list.

How do I go about formatting the external drive via USB?

thanks for any tip!
Click to expand...

Same way you do so with a regular internal hard drive, but the
difficult part isn't that this drive is USB. As I mentioned, you just
treat it the same way as an internal drive. It's that it's formatted
by Linux -- likely using the Ext2 or Ext3 filesystems. Windows can't
figure out what to even do with those. First thing you'll need to do
is destroy and re-create the partitions, because simple formatting
typically doesn't work. I'm guessing that's why you're asking.

The Windows FDisk utility is useless, as it can't figure out what to
do with Ext2/Ext3 partitions. Either download the FreeDOS version of
fdisk:

http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/

(be aware that it only supports drives up to 128megs)

Partition magic is another utility that recognizes and can remove Ext2
and Ext3 partitions -- It costs about $50-$100 retail though.

Another option is to use the FDisk partition utility from a Linux
Distro. Not sure if it's possible to run that program separately, as
I've only run it as a part of the installation, but it recognizes and
can destroy Ext2 and Ext3 partitions.

Once you've rebooted, you can create the NTFS partitions with your
choice of program and format. Don't blame Linux on this one. It's
Microsoft's fault for not updating FDisk (or the Windows OS for that
matter) to recognize "foreign" file systems.
 
MCheu,
Since you seem to have good knowledge of this subject, I have a question re:
an external hard drive:

I obtained the Fujitsu-Recall HDD replacement (80G) from HP awhile back and
used the supplied Drive Copy Utility to image drive-to-drive, which worked
great.
The HDD Copy Utility (floppy) is a PowerQuest Disk Partitioning Tool,
v.7.0.9999, "powered by PartitionMagic v.7.0 technology".

I just bought an external 80G USB HDD and gave a shot at trying to image the
PC HDD to it using the Drive Copy Utility above. It didn't work because
"Drive number specified (2) does not exist", it is not set up to recognize
any other than that second internal drive.

However, below the final command line stating termination due to the above,
there is the command prompt A:\>. This makes me think that I might be able
to manually change the settings so it would recognize my external drive.This
is just a hunch but I am hoping it is possible, and if so, how to do it ?(or
a creative suggestion I can try?)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Jack
 
MCheu,
Since you seem to have good knowledge of this subject, I have a question re:
an external hard drive:

I obtained the Fujitsu-Recall HDD replacement (80G) from HP awhile back and
used the supplied Drive Copy Utility to image drive-to-drive, which worked
great.
The HDD Copy Utility (floppy) is a PowerQuest Disk Partitioning Tool,
v.7.0.9999, "powered by PartitionMagic v.7.0 technology".

I just bought an external 80G USB HDD and gave a shot at trying to image the
PC HDD to it using the Drive Copy Utility above. It didn't work because
"Drive number specified (2) does not exist", it is not set up to recognize
any other than that second internal drive.

However, below the final command line stating termination due to the above,
there is the command prompt A:\>. This makes me think that I might be able
to manually change the settings so it would recognize my external drive.This
is just a hunch but I am hoping it is possible, and if so, how to do it ?(or
a creative suggestion I can try?)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Jack
Click to expand...

Thanks. I wish I could help, but I don't think I've ever run across
this scenario before. I've only used Partition Magic 8, and I've not
had to use it from the command line before (my manual doesn't even
cover using it from the command line).
 
Did you get a workable solution to this?
My computer sees the drive in the device manager, but not in the disk
manager.

Thanks,
jojo
 
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