Windows 10: External drive formatting issues using Windows 10

Seagate 4T external drive we want to use with Acronis True Image. At some point the external drive became formatted with 2 volumes, each with about 2T.


In mucking around to try and get back to a single partition with all 4T, I am now stuck with one unallocated 2T partition and one 2T

partition formatted in NTFS.


The unlocated partition is not available to do anything at all.


How can I make nice again and get to one 4T NTFS drive?


Frustrating!

:)

 

Format an external Drive.

Hello Roger,

Thank you for posting your concern in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

I would suggest you to follow the below steps to format the drive you are referring to.

• Right Click on Start menu and select Open Computer Management.
  
• 
  In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management.
  
• 
  Right-click the volume that you want to format, and then click Format.
  
• 
  To format the volume with the default settings, in the Format dialog box, click
  OK, and then click OK again.
  

Note: You cannot format a disk or partition that is currently in use, including the partition that contains Windows.

Hope it helps.

Thank you.

 

External drives and Windows 10 issue

Since you are having multiple issues with Windows 10, we suggest you to run a System File Checker (SFC) and Deployment Image Servicing (DISM) to look into the system for possible corruption. To do so, kindly follow the steps below:

• Press Windows key + X
• On the menu which should pop-up on the lower-left side of your screen, click
  Command Prompt (admin)
• Type the following on Command Prompt (wait for the SFC scan to finish before running DISM):
  
  sfc /scannow
  
  dism /online /restorehealth /cleanup-image
  
  

Check the result of the scans, and if it states that it was able to fix some corrupted files, simply restart your computer to apply the fix and check if the issue persists.

Regarding your external hard disk, we suggest you to update your USB Hard Disk drivers. To do so, follow the steps below:

• Press Windows key + X.
• Click Device Manager.
• Find the disk drive for your external hard disk.
• Right-click your disk drive.
• Click Update Driver Software.
• A new windows will prompt, click Search automatically for updated driver software.

Let us know how it goes.

 

want to Format a La Cie External Drive Because the Software Genie 9 has too many versions of backup.

Hello,

To format an external USB or an external hard drive you can easily do it by accessing Computer Management. For us to assist you, we suggest that you follow the steps listed below:

• Press the Start button.
• Type Computer Management.
• On the left side, click on Disk Management under Storage.
• Locate the drive that you want to format.
• Once located, right-click on the drive and choose Format.

If the hard drive has not been formatted with the steps that we have provided above, we recommend that you contact the manufacturer of your hard drive. Some hard drive requires a software that you'll need to use just to format it.

Let us know how it goes and if you need further assistance, feel free to post back.