Vista - can't format my external hard drive

I looked at some of the other posts and didn't find any solution for my
current problem, so here it is:
My XP computer has recently decided to give up (i think the motherboard
is bad), so I bought a new HP desktop that comes with Vista. I pulled
out my old XP hard drive (which is partitioned into 2 virtual drives)
and want to use it as an external disk. I used an external usb enclosure
and pulled all my data off the drive (note the disk is working properly,
no issues). By using the Vista Disk Management tool I was able to remove
all the volumes and delete all the partitions (I was trying to merge it
back into 1 disk). Now I have 1 memory chuck labeled as primary drive.
When I try to format that drive I get an error saying something along
the line of formatting was not completely or not successful.
Has anyone had this issue before? I have a Hitachi drive, but as I've
mentioned it was working with Vista before I decided to unpartition and
delete all the volumes. It does show up as a drive in my computer but
since it is not formatted successfully I can't use it. I tried to do the
quick format as well as the full format.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Bob


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You have to create a new partition before you can format.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience -
Windows Vista Enthusiast

---------------------------------------------------------------

"hbob16" <hbob16.3fjg7d@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:hbob16.3fjg7d@xxxxxx

I looked at some of the other posts and didn't find any solution for my
current problem, so here it is:
My XP computer has recently decided to give up (i think the motherboard
is bad), so I bought a new HP desktop that comes with Vista. I pulled
out my old XP hard drive (which is partitioned into 2 virtual drives)
and want to use it as an external disk. I used an external usb enclosure
and pulled all my data off the drive (note the disk is working properly,
no issues). By using the Vista Disk Management tool I was able to remove
all the volumes and delete all the partitions (I was trying to merge it
back into 1 disk). Now I have 1 memory chuck labeled as primary drive.
When I try to format that drive I get an error saying something along
the line of formatting was not completely or not successful.
Has anyone had this issue before? I have a Hitachi drive, but as I've
mentioned it was working with Vista before I decided to unpartition and
delete all the volumes. It does show up as a drive in my computer but
since it is not formatted successfully I can't use it. I tried to do the
quick format as well as the full format.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Bob


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Connect the old drive up directly to a M/B port (IDE/SATA) on your new
computer. Can you work with it from there? If not, the drive is likely bad.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"hbob16" <hbob16.3fjg7d@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hbob16.3fjg7d@xxxxxx

Did you creat a partition & format it within Disk Management or?

"hbob16" <hbob16.3fjg7d@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hbob16.3fjg7d@xxxxxx

I did create a new partition. I just put that drive inside my new
machine. Tried the quick format, same error, now I am doing a regular
format. Anyone have any other ideas?
Thanks for those who replied


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Try deleting all old partitions. Then create a new one and format the
partition.

Does it work? If not, what is occurring?

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"hbob16" <hbob16.3fk57c@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hbob16.3fk57c@xxxxxx

The regular format worked *sigh*. I don't know why it wouldn't work over
usb. Thanks for all who tried to help.


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I know this is an old post, but I thought I'd still add my 2 cents in
since I was searching online for ways to fix the same problem and
couldn't find a solution that didn't involve removing the drive from the
enclosure and installing it direct to the motherboard.

I had run into the same problem and had tried time after time to format
the drive while it was in the enclosure via usb only to get error
messages or crashes.

Finally I was able to make it work by deleting the partition in the
disk management console and then creating a new simple volume on the
disk but restricting the size of the partition to about 5 gb's (on a 320
gb hard drive). Miraculously this worked and the drive came up. After
words, I right clicked the volume and went through the "extend volume"
wizard to expand it to almost the full size of the disk.


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