Windows 10: What happens when you unplug a formatted external drive?

What happens when you remove a formatted external drive like a WD My Passport?

:)

 

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.

 

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.

 

External drive not recognized

I have an external drive that is not being recognized. I have unplugged it and and plugged it back in and still not being recognized. I see it listed in device manager and it says it is working properly. In disk management it says Disk 1 Unknown not initialized.
I have tried changing drive letters not able to do that. This happened when I disconnected an hdmi cable, The external drive stopped responded at that point so I unplugged it but when In plugged it back it is not being recognized. I can feel the disk spinning
so it is working. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance