[Fast Alpha]

Hi I have thisdrive

When I used it, then tried to format the hard drive I think it is NTFS file system. I format it, tried to erase some data that would not delete.
I then in disk management, I delete volume to clear the drive of all data. Then I assigned a drive letter, that messed up my windows OS hard drive.
So I had to restore the OS again.
now it is unallocated in disk management.

How do I get it back to original factory settings, can i send it back to Intenso for a repair ?

[Person of Color]

Intenso!



Go buy a real hard drive, not one endorsed by Shadow the Hedgehog.

[Fast Alpha]

Well I think that's a real good reply, why didn't I think of that, have some street knowledge.
I feel as if this is a no answer thread. Just to get to the point.
Yes.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

Return it and go buy a real drive.

[oasiz]

While a bit more advanced, you can use "diskpart" to "clean" a disk that has a borked partition table.
This is something that I haven't managed to find from the graphical interface, useful in some situations.

However, if you have no idea what you are doing, I would suggest that you don't do any of this.
The initial post almost sounds like you did something to the windows partition instead.



Should be something like this:
Run diskpart
diskpart> list disk

You will get a list of disks, select the external drive, let's say that it's Disk 1

diskpart> select disk 1

You can list volumes by typing "list volume" (or was it plural)

Anyway, what we want to do is to type "clean" when disk 1 is selected.
After this, you should be a able to use the graphical disk manager to create a new partition.

[Fast Alpha]

oasiz, on 28 January 2015 - 01:20 AM, said:

While a bit more advanced, you can use "diskpart" to "clean" a disk that has a borked partition table.
This is something that I haven't managed to find from the graphical interface, useful in some situations.

However, if you have no idea what you are doing, I would suggest that you don't do any of this.
The initial post almost sounds like you did something to the windows partition instead.



Should be something like this:
Run diskpart
diskpart> list disk

You will get a list of disks, select the external drive, let's say that it's Disk 1

diskpart> select disk 1

You can list volumes by typing "list volume" (or was it plural)

Anyway, what we want to do is to type "clean" when disk 1 is selected.
After this, you should be a able to use the graphical disk manager to create a new partition.

That's how I fixed my Windows 8.1 Os on my hard drive.
I used diskpart to fix the hard drive and reinstall the OS.
I did not know that you could to use it for repairing USB external hard drives!!!!

After cleaning the disk, then how do i get it back to original configuration.
Are these external drives NTFS or FAT32?

I cannot remember it.

[oasiz]

NTFS if you are dealing with windows or anything post-2007 (to be safe) with other OS
FAT32 is there for compatibility purposes really and has a bunch of limitations.

Once you perform "clean", there is no filesystem at all. It's up to you what to use there.

TL;DR: Create a single NTFS partition, use all the space.

[Fast Alpha]

OK before I do anything else to this Windows 8.1 disaster.

It states here in disk manger.

you must initialise a disk before logical disk manager can access it.

select disks

list disk 1 ( the external drive )

Use the following partition style for the selected disks

MBR ( master boot record )

GPT ( GUID partition table )

Note: The GPT partition style is not recognised by all previous versions of Windows.

[oasiz]

MBR, but once you have cleaned it, you shouldn't touch diskpart at all anymore.
You can do everything from the disk management.

Just initialize it, use MBR, NTFS and you are good to go.
I don't know what you did initially to cause an unbootable system as generally it shouldn't even let that happen easily.

[Fast Alpha]

Thanks oasiz, first time I did the delete volume thing. It did not complete, so that could be why the OS was trashed.
But I got it working again and usable.

[High Treason]

In newer Windows OSes I've noticed that if a drive is unmounted while the indexing service is running it can corrupt files and even the partition table on any other drive that is still mounted.

Which may be why your OS went down the shitter.