force format external hard drive windows 10

If this method did not help to fix an inaccessible hard drive, proceed to the next method.

Perhaps your external hard drive is simply not compatible with the OS. You can also try a previous version of Windows (7 or 8). For example, if you are using Windows, try connecting an external hard disk to a computer with a Linux or Mac operating system. Try another OS or older Windows versionĬheck whether it is possible to access an external disk from another OS. It is useless and fixing an inaccessible hard drive will not work this way. For example: if the hard disk partition is named D and the external disk name is also named D, there is no need to change the letter of the external disk. It makes no sense to change the drive letter if you do not have a letter conflict. In rare cases, you can run it, but the effect of the disk check will be temporary and you will again have to deal with an external hard drive with access denied in Windows 10/11. Basically, you cannot start an external hard disk at all. Unfortunately, it is useless to try to start a disk check. Now you have a list of disks, you can select the one you want to format and partition. Choose a Disk and Clear Data Using Clear-Disk If you decide you want to convert your GPT disk to an MBR, check out our MBR to GPT no data loss conversion guide. It can handle larger drives, more partitions, and is less prone to error. On my tiny example USB flash drive, this doesn't make much difference, but you might want to split a larger drive into small partitions for data management and so on.įor most modern drives, working with modern operating systems, GPT is the way to go.

In short, MBR only allows for four total partitions on the drive, while GPT allows up to 128 partitions. You might have noticed the two different partition styles commonly used for Windows systems: MBR and GPT. The get-disk command brings up a list of every disk on your computer, along with its name, drive status, total size, and partition type.

Force format external hard drive windows 10