How to Fix External Hard Drive Not Formatted Error

Have you ever met up an error ” disk is not formatted” while trying to open or access your external hard drive? If yes, it could be quite frustrating as it restricts you from accessing your personal data. This error message usually popups when your drive turns to RAW. In such a situation, you’ll need the perfect solutions on how to fix external hard drive not formatted to resolve this issue.

This article contains the 6 best fixes for external hard drive not formatted error along with some of its possible causes. So, let’s proceed…..!

What does “Disk is not formatted” mean?

When your external hard drive says “the disk is not formatted” error, it simply means that your disk is not prepared for used within the Windows OS & the data store in it can’t be accessible.

Generally, when you receive this error message, your external drive is shown as RAW under the Disk Management or File Explorer. This is because, the file system of your external hard drive gets corrupted due to sudden ejection or power outage. If you want to get rid of this error then you can click here.

However, there are some other reasons as well that could lead external hard drive not formatting error. To know the more reasons, simply scroll down to the next section.

What Causes External Hard Drive Not Formatted Error?

These are the most frequent causes that could often lead to “the disk is not formatted” error.

• Due to corrupted drivers
• Malware/virus infection
• Bad sectors on hard drive
• Corrupted hard disk partition
• Improper drive format
• Damaged or missing DLL, EXE or SYS files
• Incompatible/outdated BIOS, hardware drivers, etc.

As you have come to know the reasons behind this error, now it’s a time to troubleshoot this error by applying the below given fixes.

How To Fix External Hard Drive Not Formatted Error?

These are some of the effective ways on how to fix external hard drive not formatted error. 

Solution 1: Use CHKDSK Command To Fix Hard Drive Not Formatted Error

CHKDSK is one of the powerful in-built tools that come with Windows and it is very helpful in checking corruption and fixing the problems, errors, and corruption found in a drive(s).

Follow the below-mentioned steps to retrieve data from an external hard drive using CHKDSK:

Step 1 – Connect your error throwing external hard drive with your PC.

Step 2 – On your PC, click START and in search bar type “cmd”. Right-click the result and select Run as administrator.

Step 3 – New command window will open. Now you have to type the following command “CHKDSK [driveletter] /r” in the command window.

For example – If your memory card display as E: Drive, then you must enter the command – “CHKDSK E: /r”. The parameter “/r” is the command for repair the issue or problems it finds.

The process will take some time to check and repair the specific disk. Wait for process to get complete.

Step 4 – Once the process completes. Proceed further and select “Yes”. CHKDSK will give the information about what it has done.

Step 5 – You can now go back to My Computer and check whether you are able to access the data stored on your external hard drive.

Note: The above command can also be used to retrieve data from PC internal hard drive, external hard drive, memory cards, USB flash drives.

However, it may be possible that this CHKDSK command may work for you, but what if it does not? Well, in such cases you need to go for the next method.

Solution 2: Change The Drive Letter Name

Changing the drive letter often helps to resolve various kind of disk related issues including – external hard drive not formatted error. So, you should also try this method once.

Step 1: Firstly, you need to press “Win + X” keys then click on “Disk Management”.

Step 2: Make a right-click on your removable device then choose an option “Change Drive Letter or Paths”.

Step 3: Now, a pop-up box will appear from where you need to click on the Change option to change the drive letter of your hard drive.

Step 4: At last, click the OK button to confirm the process.

Now, restart your system and check whether you able to format your external hard disk or not.

Solution 3: Scan Hard Drive With Anti-virus Programs

When your external hard drive is infected by virus or malware then also you may face format hard drive disk error. In such a situation, you should to install and run an Antivirus program on your PC.

Here’s what you need to do:

Firstly, you need to install any reliable anti-virus software on your system. Then, you need to scan your whole system along with external hard disk. If any virus has been detected, it will remove it from your disk & fix the error in no time.

Please Note – Make sure the anti-virus tool should not delete any data while fixing the issues. So, please save your vital data files first. Then, move to format the hard drive if required.

Also read – 4 Ways to Repair/Fix Bad Sectors on External Hard Drive

Solution 4: Run The System File Checker

Another method that you can try to fix Seagate external hard drive not formatted error is to run the SFC tool. It is a built-in Windows utility and helps to repair corrupt system files such as SYS, EXE, or DLL files that can lead to this issue. Follow the easy steps of this utility to resolve this error:

• At first, click on the “Start” >> type cmd.
• Next, right-click on the “Command Prompt” >> choose the “Run as administrator” option.

• Then, you need to enter the below command in order. (A DISM command is mainly used to create the Windows image in order to guard your data.)

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Checkhealth
sfc /scannow

Solution 5: Update The Hardware Driver

Sometimes, “Disk/Drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now” errors take place due to outdated disk drivers. At this time, you need to update your hardware driver with Disk Management.

Here are the simple instructions that you can follow to deal with such annoying issues:

• First, connect an external hard drive with your computer
• Next, right-click a “This PC” >> choose the “Properties“.
• Then, click the “Device Manager” >> expand the “Disk drives” option.

• Find & right-click on a problematic drive >> select the “Update driver“
• Make a tap on “automatically search for driver software online“.

• Lastly, you need to wait until the updating process gets finishes, then reboot your computer.

Also Read – 13 Ways to Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac (2023)

Solution 6: Delete Partition & Recreate the New Volume

Even after trying the above fixes if the error still persists, then you have one more left for you that is delete a partition & then create the new volume. Whenever needed, you can also recover deleted partition on external hard drive with ease.

Here’s how to delete the partition and recreate new volume:

• First of all, make right-click on “This PC” >> choose the “Manage” option.
• Then, right-click on problematic partition >> choose the “Delete Volume“.
• Under a “Delete simple volume“, choose the “Yes” to proceed further.
• Later, a deleted partition will display up as an unallocated space.
• After that, right-click an unallocated space >> select the “New Simple Volume…”
• Under the New Simple Volume Wizard >> click on “Next” to continue.
• Now, follow a wizard to state the size of the volume, assign the drive letter to a volume. After this, format your partition.

How to Recover Data from External Hard Drive [Recommended]

If you have formatted your external hard drive without keeping the backup of your essential data then you can use the Hard Drive Data Recovery Tool to get back your missing files from formatted data storage drive.

It’s one of the powerful tool that has the ability to recover data from all external storage devices such as – USB drives, memory cards, Pen drive etc. This tool always has a user-friendly interface and is 100% safe & secure to use.

No matter, whether your external data storage device is formatted, corrupted, damaged or virus infected, this software will scan the hard drive & recover the data from it in no time.

Therefore, just download, install and run this external hard drive recovery tool on your PC (Windows & Mac) and retrieve your deleted files from external hard drive with ease.

emid emid
* Free version of the program only scans and previews recoverable items.

So, simply go through its step-by-step guide to recover data after fixing external hard disk not formatted error…

Bonus Tip: Reformat External Hard Drive To Make It Reusable

Once, you restore your files back from your external hard drive, you can then reformat them to make them reusable. Below find out how to format the hard drive.

• Click Start>My Computer
• Now right click on the external hard drive that you want to format. Select Format option
• Now click on Start and finally click on OK to confirm the formatting process

Once the format process is complete, you can again use your external hard to store new data.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Can A Corrupted Hard Drive Be Formatted?

Of course yes, the corrupted or damaged hard drive can be formatted by following these easy steps:

• Connect your external data storage device to PC.
• Then, right click on Start menu (Windows icon) & click on Disk Management.
• Here, you need to find your external device then make a right click on it.
• Select Format then tick the checkbox ‘Perform a quick format’ & press the Ok button.

How Do I Force A Hard Drive To Format?

By following the below steps, you can force a hard drive to format:

• Go to This PC then >> Devices & Drives section
• Make a right-click on external hard disk >> choose Format.
• Then, select a file system >> click Start option.
• Under a warning prompt, you need to click on OK.

How Do I Format My Hard Drive To NTFS?

In order to format the hard drive to NTFS, you have to follow the beneath steps:

• At first, plug your external hard drive to PC.
• Next, open the File Explorer.
• Make a right-click on a name of your drive in a left pane.
• Now, from a popup menu, choose Format.
• Under a drop-down menu of File system, choose NTFS >> tap Start.

Conclusion

Well, it’s quite frustrating to face external hard drive not formatted error while trying to format your storage device. But, now you don’t need to worry about.

After going through this post, you must have gain enough knowledge on how to fix external hard drive not formatted error. As you can see, I have specified the 6 proven ways to fix external hard drive not formatted error, so you must try all of them.

However, in case you face a data loss situation after resolving this error then you can simply choose a Hard Drive Data Recovery Software to regain your missing data.