Showing Error While Formatting External Hard Drive or Formatting Fails
The process of deleting the old data from the hard drive is called formatting. Its main motive is to free or repair the storage space for reading and writing new data or files. In other words, it means making space available for the new files. As a user format, the operating system deletes all bookkeeping details from the hard drive.
After formatting the hard drive in Windows, an operating system makes sure that all sectors are reliable or not and looks for the bad sectors as well. There can be various reasons for which one needs to format a hard drive.
For example, installing a new Windows to avoid any virus or malware attack, or if a user is giving the system to someone else or dumping it,. In all these situations, it is necessary to format a hard disk on Windows. However, there are some situations when a user is trying to format the hard disk, and formatting fails while formatting an external hard drive in Windows. It becomes a very irritating problem for a user as he or she is not able to figure out what to do. Thus, the main focus of this blog is on its causes and various troubleshooting ways to fix Showing error while formatting external hard drive or formatting fails .
Formatting Fails or Showing Error While Formatting External Hard Drive: Fix Issue
“For the last few days, I have been facing an issue while formatting a hard disk in Windows. The situation is that I want to do a clean and successful installation of Windows 7 on my laptop. But, whenever I tried to format the hard disk, I received an error: “Windows could not format a partition on the disk. This is the error that occurs every time I try to format the complete hard disk. I do not know what is happening with the hard disk partition in Windows 10 on my hard drive. Therefore, we are looking for a solution to fix this formatting hard drive issue.”.
Note: If you formatted your hard drive and lost your data from it,. Then, you can use Hard Disk Data Recovery Software. It recovers all types of data, such as: photos, videos, audio, and multimedia files and folders
There are many types of data available on a machine and they are used by different types of user groups. Therefore, this software is not limited to a single set of data and allows you to repair any type of data, be it media or document files. You can download this utility on Windows OS. It supports recovering deleted files from Seagate’s external hard drive.
- Download and run it on your computer.
- Select a partition and click the Scan or Scan Format icon.
- View a complete sample of recovered data items in the software’s control panel.
- Select Keep all data or Keep deleted” to recover all data from your hard drive
Possible Causes External Hard Drive Showing not Formatted
While performing the formatting process in Windows, an error is always encountered, or the formatting process is completed unsuccessfully. There are many reasons behind this, which are listed below:
- One of the possible reasons is that the hard drive is not configured properly in the BIOS, due to which the BIOS & Windows detect the drive wrongly.
- The built-in utilities in Windows, such as the format utility, are also affected by viruses or spyware programs.
- If there is corruption on the hard drive, that will make Windows stop the process and display an error message.
- The other most possible reason is system is not having the latest BIOS, hardware drivers, installed and no latest service pack
- installed on the operating system or Windows does not address or identify the parameters of the drive properly.
- A user is trying to format the larger partition than 32GB as a FAT32 in Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, or 2003.
- The data cable or hard drive is damaged or defective physically.
These are all the possible causes of errors while formatting an external hard drive on a Windows operating system.
Tips & Tricks to Troubleshoot Hard Disk Formatting Issue
To resolve the “cannot format hard drive in Windows” issue, one can use various troubleshooting tips and tricks discussed below:
Make sure that one has the latest BIOS installed on the computer system, motherboard, and PC controller card. One can get BIOS updates from the manufacturers of the computer system. Apart from this, the BIOS must be set up to auto-detect the hard drive.
- Make sure that the latest drivers are installed in the system for the hardware. One can look for the latest drivers from hardware manufacturers.
- The most important thing is to always keep the computer system free from viruses or spyware.
- Sometimes data cable is the cause of formatting problems so, it is suggested to be replaced with serial ATA or IDE ribbon cable.
- Moreover, make sure that these cables are not longer than 18 inches.
- One can also try Quick Format instead of Full Format when the Full Format is not completed successfully.
Also read: External Hard Drive not Ejected Properly
Final Word
There can be various reasons to format the hard drive in Windows but when it fails to complete, it creates trouble for the user. It becomes really difficult for a user to detect the exact reason behind the error showing error while formatting external hard drive or being unable to format the disk in Windows. Thus, after understanding the main causes behind the formatting failure or an error shown while formatting a hard drive in Windows, various troubleshooting methods are discussed. One can use them based on the cause and resolve the hard disk problem while formatting in Windows.
