How can I change my external hdd from RAW to NTFS ?

flammablepiss

flammablepiss

New Member
I have a 1 TB hdd and I tried to format it the other day except it had an error half way through and now it has change to a RAW hard drive.

I went into Computer Management and tried to format it to NTFS but instead if just formatted it to RAW instead :S

I do not need to recover any files as I already have copies.... I just want to change it back to NTFS so that my laptop recognizes it.

Thanks !
 
What is the make of the external HDD? The fact that it "error-ed out " during the format might mean that the disk is damaged. I would download whatever diagnostic utilities you may find from the manufacturer's website and use that to repair and/or format the disk. I'm not sure what other utilities you would use to scan a RAW disk, though I'm sure some exist.
 
According to my experience when you formatting a drive to NTFS its better to concentrate on best cluster size. My understanding is the smaller the cluster size the less wasted disk space and also we have to look at is there any performance difference between the different sizes. If for example I were to change my current size from 4096k to 512k how would it affect the drive.
 
easus partition master or acronic disk director are both good disk management programs.
but i think there maybe a problem with your drive.
Had this problem myself before with an old drive.
when u get it formatted run CHKDSK and it may find and hopefully repair any errors
 
driverdj2000 said:
easus partition master or acronic disk director are both good disk management programs.
but i think there maybe a problem with your drive.
Had this problem myself before with an old drive.
when u get it formatted run CHKDSK and it may find and hopefully repair any errors
Click to expand...

Hey thanks a lot.
I finally managed to format it to NTFS using the tools you suggests. and CHKDSK shows nothing so I guess thats good.

Now however I have a different problem... I am trying to copy all of my files back onto my harddrive (about 21gb in total) but it simply won't let me. I copy and paste onto my harddrive and then it stays stuck at 1% :( I don't think its my laptop as files copy perfectly well everywhere else.
 
21GB is a lot to transfer, I assume this is a USB connected external? Try starting the copy and letting it run overnight. I'm thinking it's not stuck, just slow.
 
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