How to Fix External Hard Drive Needs Formatting in Windows

Phenomena: After you have plugged your external hard drive into a computer, you can’t open it to access the files because Windows pops up an error message that reads “You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it” OR “The disk in drive is not formatted (appears in Windows XP)”.

In fact, the not formatted error not only happens on an external hard drive but also appears on almost all storage devices such as hard disk drives, USB flash drives, pen drives, floppy disks, memory cards, memory sticks, and so on. Facing such a situation, what should you do? Are you going to format the hard drive as you are told?

Why My External Hard Drive Needs to Be Formatted

Possible Reasons:

First and foremost, we would like to show you the reasons that may lead to this error. In this way, you can avoid improper operations on your external hard drive or prevent terrible things from happening in the coming days. Below are the possible reasons:

• The external hard drive suffers from sudden power outages when it is used to transfer files or something else;
• The external hard drive is improperly pulled out or forced to pull out instead of safely removed from the PC;
• The external hard drive gets virus attacked and the file system gets corrupted;
• There are bad sectors on the external hard drive.
• More for discovering…

What Should You Do When an External Hard Drive Needs Formatting

The message does not necessarily mean that the files on the external hard drive are gone. Windows may simply be unable to recognize the file system correctly. The safest response depends on whether the drive contains important data.

• If the external hard drive contains important files: do not click Format. Recover your files first.
• If you already have a complete backup: you can troubleshoot the drive or format it if necessary.
• If the drive is new or contains no important data: formatting may be appropriate after confirming that the correct drive is selected.

3 Solutions to External Hard Drive Needs Formatting

#1. Check the Connection First

Before assuming that the external hard drive is corrupted, rule out a connection problem.

• Disconnect the external hard drive and reconnect it to another USB port.
• If possible, try another compatible USB cable.
• If another computer is available, connect the drive to it and check whether the files can be accessed.

If the drive works normally on another computer, the problem may be related to the original computer, USB port, cable, driver, or Windows configuration rather than the external hard drive itself.

If the drive still asks to be formatted, continue with the next step.

#2. Check Your Hard Drive for Errors

File system errors can also cause the disk formatting error. CHKDSK can be used to check the file system and file-system metadata for logical or physical errors. Follow the steps below to run the CHKDSK command.

1) Press the Win + R keys to call out the Run box.

2) Type cmd into the blank and hit the Enter key.

3) Type CHKDSK K:/f (if your external hard drive is Drive K:) into the Command Prompt window and press Enter. Replace K: with the actual drive letter assigned to your external hard drive.

CHKDSK usually takes some time to fix the error, so please be patient. If CHKDSK can run this process normally, your external hard drive may become normal as before. Then you can try again accessing your external hard drive after restarting your computer.

However, if you are unable to go through this process, and encounter the following message: the type of the file system is RAW, CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives, you need to format the drive.

#3. Recover Data Before You Format External Hard Drive

If the external hard drive contains important files and you do not have another complete backup, recover the data before formatting.

Remember that the more changes you have made, the fewer chances you have for data recovery. Here you have two options to recover data from not formatted hard drive.

1. Send the external hard drive to a professional data recovery center to get off data technically. This will usually cost you a sum of money.
2. Try professional free data recovery software by yourself before you pay a penny.

If you choose option 1, jump to the second move – format external hard drive. If you choose option 2, keep reading from here.

First Move: recover files from not formatted hard drive

For a drive that is still detected by Windows, you can try MiniTool Power Data Recovery to scan the external hard drive and recover accessible files.

With powerful data recovery features, you can easily recover the mainstream file types on audio, video, image, email, etc.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery works great on all Windows operating systems. Click the button below to get the free edition to recover 1 GB of files for free.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1. Connect the problematic external hard drive to your computer and launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery. Now, you can select a partition which you want to recover data from and click Scan. If you need to retrieve data from the whole external hard drive, change to the Devices tab and select the target drive to scan.

Step 2. When the scanning process is finished, the software displays files according to their file paths in a tree structure. To quickly find the wanted files, you can make use of the Filter and Search features to filter out unnecessary files.  Alternatively, change to the Type tab to find files by their file types and file formats.

Step 3. Finally, choose the files you need and click Save to choose a new destination for those files.

Second Move: format external hard drive

Now it is time for you to format the external hard drive to regain access. Here you can make use of the Disk Management utility or MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. Their difference is the latter one offers more file systems and is more flexible in formatting. For example, you can format a hard drive larger than 32GB to FAT32 with this partition manager.

>>Format Using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard Free on your PC. Then follow the guide below:

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1. Make sure your external hard drive is well connected, then launch this free partition manager to get the main interface.

Step 2. Find the target partition and right-click on it. You need to select Format from the context menu, then set the Partition Label and File System in the prompt window. Click OK to save your settings.

Step 3. Click Apply at the bottom left corner to complete the suspending process. Afterward, you can use the external hard drive normally.

>> Format with Disk Management

Step 1. Press the Win + R keys at the same time to call out the Run box. Then type diskmgmt.msc and hit OK.

Step 2. In the disk map area, right-click the external hard drive that needs to be formatted and choose Format from the shortcut menu.

Step 3. Select the desired file system and click OK.

Step 4. When you see a warning message which reads “Formatting this volume will erase all data on it”, you just click OK to continue.

Step 5. Wait for Disk Management to finish the work.

If the process fails, read How Can You Fix “The Format Did Not Complete Successfully”?

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Summary

In this article, we mainly focus on how to fix the external hard drive needs formatting issue without losing files.

If data in the drive is meaningless, format it directly. Otherwise, consider data restoration if no backup is available. If you have a better suggestion, share it in the following comment section. For any questions about using MiniTool software, please contact [email protected]. We read every thread.

You Need to Format the Disk in Drive FAQ