![]() ![]() Fix : External USB Hard Disk drive not detecting / not working properly problem in Windows 8, 7, Vista & XP. I Think My Hard Drive Is Failing, What Shall I Do? So you are worried that a hard drive failure is just around the corner? The truth is, even if you are not worried. Trying to format a large external USB or Firewire hard drive to the FAT32 file system? Can’t do it? Only see an option for formatting the drive using the NTFS file. How to Format External Hard Drive to FAT3. Windows. Trying to format a large external USB or Firewire hard drive to the FAT3. Can’t do it? Only see an option for formatting the drive using the NTFS file format? Well if you answered yes any of those questions, then you’re at the right place. I was recently trying to format my 1 TB My. Book external hard drive in Windows XP to FAT3. NTFS format. Well because I needed to connect it to a NAS device and the NTFS permissions were causing the NAS not to be able to access the drive. Simple solution is to use FAT3. Though it’s sometimes useful to format a USB drive in NTFS format. Also, formatting a drive in FAT or FAT3. Mac, Linux, and older versions of Windows such as Windows 9. Unfortunately, Windows XP and Windows Server 2. FAT3. 2 if it’s less than 3. GB! However, if you have a drive that is 1. TB or larger, you may still get an error saying “The volume is too big for FAT3. In that case, you can use some 3rd party programs that will allow you to format an external hard drive with the larger size. Let’s go through the different methods. In case you are having problems getting your external hard drive to show up in Windows, read my article on how to change the drive letter for an external drive in Windows. ![]() Format in FAT3. 2 using Drive- Specific Tools. Before we get into using the command prompt and other third- party programs, it’s worth mentioning that some of the hard drive manufacturers have created their own tools for converting a drive which is larger than 3. GB to FAT3. 2. Here is a list: Seagate Disc. Wizard Western Digital FAT3. Formatting Tool. Format External Hard Drive in FAT3. DOSOpen a command window by going to Start, then Run and typing in CMD. Now type in the following command at the prompt: format /FS: FAT3. X: Replace the letter X with the letter of your external hard drive in Windows. Windows will go ahead and begin formatting the drive in FAT3. There seems to also be an issue when using the command line besides the size limit problem. Namely, it can take forever to format the hard drive for some users. Not sure why, but I’ve seen it enough times and it can be very frustrating to wait 5 hours and then have the whole format fail. If the format is taking longer than an hour, just cancel it and try one of the methods below first. ![]() ![]() External SATA (eSATA) Hard Drive - Quick Start Guide, Data Sheet and Downloads. One of the common issues many Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 users are experiencing is missing optical drive icon. According to users, after installing the operating. Format in FAT3. 2 using Verbatim Smart. Disk FAT3. 2 Utility. There is a free utility called Verbatim FAT3. Tool which will allow you to convert your hard drive to FAT3. I use to recommend a program called Swiss. Knife, which I mention below, but it’s no longer free and no one really needs to spend $1. NTFS to FAT3. 2. There are lots of other free tools and this Verbatim one is one of the better ones. ![]() Just download it, unzip it and run the tool. It’s a standalone EXE file, so you don’t even have to install it on your system. Choose the drive you want to format, give it a Volume name and click Format Drive! It’s a painfully simple program to use and it works really well. If you don’t even want to bother with the command prompt, just download this free tool and use it. Format in FAT3. 2 using FAT3. ![]() Format. FAT3. 2Format is another free tool you can use to get the job done. Choose the drive, the allocation unit size, give the volume a label, choose whether you want to do a quick format or not and then click Start. I would suggest not checking Quick Format so that way the entire drive is completely overwritten and you’re starting from scratch. I’ve tried this program and it was able to convert my 1. TB hard drive to FAT3. It did take longer than Verbatim, but I didn’t choose Quick Format, which probably would have been faster. Format in FAT3. 2 using FAT3. Formatter. Another option is the FAT3. Formatter program from Tokiwa. Using this program, you can see the different partitions on the hard disk and format just one partition to FAT3. It’s probably best not to have a mix of NTFS and FAT3. This program will allow you to do that. Format in FAT3. 2 using Swiss. Knife. Swiss. Knife is a nifty little program that used to be free, but not anymore, which you can use to format many types of external drives such as USB, Firewire, PCMIA, SATA and SCSI. ![]() The link points to the CNET page, which still has the older free version you can download. You can also use it to create partitions on an external hard drive and it formats faster than Windows. With Swiss. Knife, you may run into an issue where after the conversion to FAT3. For example, if you format a 1. TB drive, you might perform the conversion and end up with only 5. ![]() MB of space. This can be fixed by first reformatting the drive in NTFS format by performing a quick format. Once you format the entire drive using NTFS, make sure to view the available space in Explorer and that it matches the size of the hard drive. Once you do that, go ahead and use Swiss. Knife to perform the conversion to FAT3. So next time you want to format a hard drive in FAT3. Windows only gives you an option for NTFS, make sure to follow one of the methods mentioned above. How to Recover Data from a Crashed Hard Drive. The complete guide to hard drive recovery. Chances are that sooner or later it will happen to someone you support or possibly even you. Please take this as a reminder to start a proper back up routine. You may want to buy an external hard drive to make it easier, and they are handy to carry with you. Step 1: Connect the Hard Drive to Another Computer. USB to IDE- SATA hard drive connector. Before you can do any work on the crashed drive you will need to remove it from the current machine (unless it is an external drive that has crashed) and connect it to another machine as a secondary drive. This is the cheapest multi- functional USB 3 option and I prefer USB 3 because it is a lot faster. If you don’t have one available then you may be able to connect the drive to another desktop computer internally as a secondary drive, though this means pulling apart another computer to install the crashed drive. If you can, try to copy data off that you would like to recover. This means you should not install the recovery software onto the drive that you are trying to recover data from. Doing so could actually overwrite files that are still hidden there and that you can still restore. PC Hard Drive Recovery: Option 1: Recuva. Recuva software for hard disk recovery. Click here to get Recuva which is a free hard drive recovery tool from Piriform (the makers of CCleaner) and is one of the best free PC data recovery tools available. If the basic scan fails, there is also a deep scan to discover more deeply- buried results. After this, you will be presented with a welcome screen giving you three options. The first option is “Recover Deleted Files”. This allows you to restore files that have been permanently deleted from the drive. This will only work if the deleted file has not already been overwritten. The second option is “Find Lost Data”. This allows you to recover data that has been lost due to a system crash. If you choose this option, you will be asked for the “start cluster” and “end cluster”. Leave the default settings to scan the whole drive. The scan could take a couple of hours depending on how large your drive is. The third option is “Find Lost Drive”. Use this option if your drive letter is not showing up in Windows Explorer or My Computer. It will attempt to connect to the drive and if successful, allow you to browse the data. Option 3: Hiren’s Boot. CDClick here to get Hiren’s Boot. CD which allows you to boot into a slimmed down version of Windows called Mini. XP from the bootable CD or bootable flash drive and run diagnostic utilities on a problematic computer. Recuva is one of the utilities that comes bundled with Hiren’s so you can run it right from the CD. This is helpful if you don’t have a USB to IDE/SATA adapter or just don’t want to pull the drive from the machine. You will need to connect another drive to the machine such as a USB flash drive or an external hard drive so you will have a place to copy your recovered data to. Option 4: Get. Data. Back. Get Data Back for hard drive data recovery. If the free utilities are not doing the trick then Click here to get Get. Data. Back give a try. If you like what you see, you can purchase the full version right then and there without even having to close out of the program. How to Restore Deleted Files After Emptying the Recycle Bin. This will only work if the file has not already been overwritten. Step 4: (If required) Use a Data Recovery Service. And finally, if none of these methods work or if you were unable to follow the steps, then you will probably need to send the drive off to a data recovery service. A word of warning these companies are typically high tech and therefore have a corresponding price. These are real professional Data Recovery services. Click to open Gillware. Gillware is one of the top recommended data recovery services in the industry. This may be a pre- emptive action with a clicking hard drive that has not yet crashed (that is a serious warning sign). The idea is that an overheated and slightly warped disk and other components may shrink enough to briefly function. Use extreme caution, and if the data is at all important, your best bet may be to spend the money and go with a professional data recovery service. I and several people I know have had success doing this, so yes it is strange but it can sometimes work! Summary of How to Recover Data from a Crashed Hard Disk Drive. Hard drive data recovery is possible, but take care not to use the disk and overwrite any data that might be possible to recover. Then try one of the suggested data recovery software programs suggested above. Finally try the more expensive professional recovery services or extreme options. If you have tried the above steps and have a hard drive recovery success story or would like to recommend other HDD recovery methods, please feel free to share.
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