Please Help, New External HD has RAW file system...can't format!

[reinnie]

Hi Everyone,

I hope someone can help me out. Yesterday I bought an external Maxtor Firewire 160GB external Hard Drive.

The Hard Drive came as FAT 32 and I tried to format it to NTFS, but it doesn't work. Windows XP recognizes the HD, but each time I click on it it tells me I need to format the drive.

I tried formating in Disk Management and in Command Prompt, but both failed. Somehow the file system of the drive is RAW and not FAT 32 anymore.

No matter what I do I can't format the drive. Each time I tried to format it would format all the way to 100% completion but then failed before it is totally complete.

I tried deleting the partition and created new ones, then format but still doesn't work.

How do I format a RAW file system Hard Drive? I have searched everywhere in google but can't find any solution.

As you should know a 160Gb HD takes forever to format and it sucks to find out that the format fails everytime at 100% before it is complete.

Dos prompt gave me an error "format failed"...of course that doesn't really help.

Thanks in advance.

 

[pweegar]

Go out and get a copy of Partition Magic. Install it and run it against your external drive. Wipe any partitions clean and let partition magic format the drive. IF that does work, return the drive and either get a replacement or your money back.

 

[jurgen36]

Use maxblast and it will format the drive ok within a minute or so. You find it on the Maxto site. Use it all the time. Regards

Jurgen