Western Digital External Hard Drive Error Messages
How can you format an external hard drive in every computer says "Windows can not format the disk?"?
I have a Western Digital 1TB external hard drive. After lending it to a friend, I had to format before I can access them on my computer. I tried, but he said the error message above. I tried on three computers since then, all with the same message, I'm sure everything went now, but I just want to be able to access it. What can I do?
use a non-Windows system to format the disk. Your friend has probably had a Mac – which o / s works differently. go to cnet.com and look for a free operating system that runs a downloadable CD / floppy [or DVD you] – make sure it has the capacity disk format [format NTSB is that your Windows box wants to find]. You will also need support USB2. make a bootable floppy disk with the o / s on it and then start your machine it. then you should be able to access the external drive and reformat it. carefully – the non-Windows o / s can probably reformat your hard drive as regular Windows. cheers