External Hard Drive Format to NTFS?

Question

Hi,

I have an external USB hard drive 120GB Hitachi, When I want to format it as NTFS, The process does not complete and the error says The Fromat did not complete successfully. But when I try to format it as FAT32 the format process is successful. I tried to use convert.exe to convert from FAT32 to NTFS but it failed saying that The First boot sector is unwritable, then All the boot sectors are unwritable.

Please Help me. Thanks.

Answer 1

I've never had much luck formatting an external drive while it's in the case. What I do is - for the purpose of formatting only - remove it from the external case and mount it temporarily inside my desktop case. Then I can usually format it any way I like and partition it if I wish. I put the drive back in the case and I'm good to go. You might try that.



There's nothing special about the drives, really. Some externals - especially the very small ones - use laptop (2.5 inch form factor) drives. In that case, you'd need a 2.5" to 3.5" hard drive converter such as this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812119245 Otherwise, mode externals just use standard 3.5" IDE (or newer ones use SATA) drives. If it's IDE, be sure to jumper it as master or slave as needed.

Answer 2

First ANY time you are making file system changes to a drive there is a possibility of Data loss. With this said I have used the following commands many times without ever having a problem. 1(a). If you are running Windows XP click Start then Run and type CMD then click OK. This will take you to a command prompt then go to step 2 1(b) If you are running Windows Vista click the Start symbol and type CMD in the search, Right click the CMD that appears and select Run as Administrator. You will probably have to click continue through the UAC of windows. This will take you to a command prompt then go to step 2 2. Type "Convert x: /FS:NTFS" and press enter (Don't include the " marks) Where x: is the letter of your external Drive This will work for any drive that is formatted NTFS or in other formats. If it is a system drive like your C: it will ask if you want to do it the next time you boot. Just say yes then shutdown and restart your computer. Warning though this will take some time for the conversion to complete!

Answer 3

OK, you can do the followings: (but you should be careful)



1- right click on my computer

2- chose 'manage'

3-click on 'manage drives'

4- delete all partitions on the USB Drive only until it's color become black

5- right click on the black tap of the drive and chose 'create new drive'

6- make it 'logical drive'

-7 (it's tap color will be green) then right click and pick 'new partition'

8- make it primary, and format it using NTFS



9- Thank me :-)

Answer 4

This should help:

http://www.tech-faq.com/convert-fat32-to-ntfs.shtml