failed format of external hard drive

[roninwar2]

I am wondering if there is a way to reformat an external hard drive after I've used a third party program to format it into an unusual format... I think I may have tried setting it up as an HD for my jtagged xbox 360.

The formatting went wrong and now I can not seem to get my computer (running windows 7 64) to recognize it - I see it in the hardware scan but can not reformat it. I have also tried other 3rd party reformatting programs without success... it's been awhile - like 8 months - since this mess up and I've just now encountered this bricked HD again after a recent move.

Thank you

 

[paul878]

boot up with the windows 7 dvd and use the installation wizard to delete the partition.

 

[Gunbuster]

Try DBAN?

http://www.dban.org/

 

[roninwar2]

this is an external hard drive.. can I use the windows 7 install wizard to delete the partition?

DBAN.... that's going to wipe out my entire system?

 

[Bubbaleone]

this is an external hard drive.. can I use the windows 7 install wizard to delete the partition?

DBAN.... that's going to wipe out my entire system?

DBAN's an excellent erase app. You can also download the SecureErase app and it's Users Guide PDF from this link (see last post): http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=32905409&highlight=#post32905409

IMHO trying to run major disk operations, from within the Windows environment, is not good practice.

Both DBAN and SecureErase are bootable "Disk Level" utilities, so be sure to make a note of each drives location and capacity, beforehand, so you know you're erasing the correct drive.

If you can, it's best to remove the drive from the USB enclosure and connect it directly to the PC's PATA or SATA cable to do the erasing and formatting.

 

[C1]

Ya, if you can get the right utility to wipe the drive (eg, write zeros) then you should be able to reclaim & format it. Not so sure if WIN 7 will be trouble free though. In fact I just recently went thru something like this. Bought a new WD320BEVT 2.5" from Newegg that I set up as an external in a Sabio enclosure. WINXP (in Manage Drives) could recognize the drive, but offered no hooks or handles to initialize/format. Of all things, I just booted into WINME and quick formatted the virgin HDD as FAT32 16kb cluster. The drive is now being used for data storage.