I am a photographer and keep my photos and associated post-processing info on an external hard drive. I also have a second hard drive to act as a backup of the first hard drive. What I didn't realize was that each time there was a backup, it was added to the second hard drive. I now find that the second hard drive seems to be full. Any attempt to access it in File Explorer just freeze up the computer for File Explorer. (Other apps such as the photo editing programs work fine). Since the second drive is just backups for the first drive, which is currently working correctly, I would just like to start over and format the second drive (rather than throwing it away and buying a new drive). Is there any way to format this full drive?
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Formatting Full Hard Drive 1
- Thread starter grnzbra
- Start date
Use a free GParted live USB to remove the second HDD's main/full partition then use Windows to reformat it.
Hope this helps...
Hope this helps...
- Thread starter
- #4
Here are some examples of common DOS commands
---- Andy
"Hmm...they have the internet on computers now"--Homer Simpson
---- Andy
"Hmm...they have the internet on computers now"--Homer Simpson
Rick998 said:
There is the additional benefit of accessing this second drive on a system that isn't actively trying to back up more data to it. Running an alternative OS (through this live USB) or taking the second hard drive to another computer offers many opportunities.
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1
- #7
you may have run in to an issue that has plagued windows from the beginning of time.
shlemiel the painter
windows explorer cannot handle accessing a folder that contains more than a certain number of files. I don't remember how many, but it is MORE than 65000.
I ran in to this during the infamous "microsoft updating windows 7 to 10 without warning" fiasco of several years ago.
my mother-in-laws computer rebooted and started installing windows and hung up for several days. not wanting to screw up whatever was going wrong I waited and after almost a week it finished the install. she did not want windows 10 so I reversed the process which also took a week.
when it finished I was going though her computer and found a folder that when I tried to access it explorer hung up/froze or something like that. I narrowed it down to a folder (I forgot where but not the TEMP folder) that had over 2,000,000 very small files in it. I don't know the exact amount because trying to get a DIR never completed even after several hours. attempts to right click on the folder and get it's properties also hung everything up. I tried running a delete command in the folder and after several hours (and several tries) it did not complete and was excruciatingly slow.
I ended up using a robocopy command to mirror an empty folder to that clogged folder which basically deleted everything in it. it took almost a day and ended with something over 2 million files deleted.
I have no idea where the files came from.
a friend of mine accidentally did something similar when he wrote a batch file to create a folder that accidentally recursively created the same folder as a sub folder several thousand times. that required a special program to clean up the mess.
shlemiel the painter
windows explorer cannot handle accessing a folder that contains more than a certain number of files. I don't remember how many, but it is MORE than 65000.
I ran in to this during the infamous "microsoft updating windows 7 to 10 without warning" fiasco of several years ago.
my mother-in-laws computer rebooted and started installing windows and hung up for several days. not wanting to screw up whatever was going wrong I waited and after almost a week it finished the install. she did not want windows 10 so I reversed the process which also took a week.
when it finished I was going though her computer and found a folder that when I tried to access it explorer hung up/froze or something like that. I narrowed it down to a folder (I forgot where but not the TEMP folder) that had over 2,000,000 very small files in it. I don't know the exact amount because trying to get a DIR never completed even after several hours. attempts to right click on the folder and get it's properties also hung everything up. I tried running a delete command in the folder and after several hours (and several tries) it did not complete and was excruciatingly slow.
I ended up using a robocopy command to mirror an empty folder to that clogged folder which basically deleted everything in it. it took almost a day and ended with something over 2 million files deleted.
I have no idea where the files came from.
a friend of mine accidentally did something similar when he wrote a batch file to create a folder that accidentally recursively created the same folder as a sub folder several thousand times. that required a special program to clean up the mess.
austinpctech
MIS
In Explorer, right click on the drive and select format. If it still locks up in Explorer, I would use the diskpart clean command. Here are the steps to clean your drive.
Click on your search box located on the bottom task bar and search for "cmd".
Right-click on it and select Run as administrator.
Type diskpart and hit enter.
Type list disk and hit enter.
Review the disk list and determine the disk number for the disk you want to clean. If you are unsure of which one is the right drive, right-click on your start button and select Disk Management. The additional disk information here may help you determine the right drive number.
Once you have determined the correct disk number, go back to your command prompt window and type select disk 2 (or whatever the correct number is) and hit enter.
Type clean and hit enter.
Now proceed to format the drive.
Click on your search box located on the bottom task bar and search for "cmd".
Right-click on it and select Run as administrator.
Type diskpart and hit enter.
Type list disk and hit enter.
Review the disk list and determine the disk number for the disk you want to clean. If you are unsure of which one is the right drive, right-click on your start button and select Disk Management. The additional disk information here may help you determine the right drive number.
Once you have determined the correct disk number, go back to your command prompt window and type select disk 2 (or whatever the correct number is) and hit enter.
Type clean and hit enter.
Now proceed to format the drive.
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