Problem with my Toshiba external drive.

Milton said:

A further screenshot, but now I'm even more confused.
I thought Disk 1 to be the Toshiba, but now Disk 1 appears to be my main hard drive ?
I'm getting quite nervous about this.

No, you are being confused by the Volume numbers, these are not the same thing as the Disk numbers. Volume 1 is your C: drive, but it is a partition on your Disk 0.

Milton said:

Now selected Disk 1 and here's the result (see screenshot)
Looks rather weird to me as it's a 1 TB drive.

Yes, the weird result is a left-over from when you....

...tried (and failed) to create a bootable version of Window 10 on my (blank) external 1TB Toshiba external drive.

It is the 16MB Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition that Setup always creates when installing Windows on a gpt partitioned drive.

Microsoft Reserved Partition - Wikipedia

As that is the only partition left you should delete it. Select that Disk 1 and use Diskpart's CLEAN command. To make very sure you have correctly selected the Toshiba use LIST PARTITION again after selecting Disk 1. If that 16MB partition is the ONLY partition you have selected the correct disk and it is safe to clean it. If it shows any other partitions, stop now!

SELECT DISK 1
LIST PARTITION
CLEAN

This will leave the drive with an empty gpt partition table. Then you can create a new partition to used the drive as a normal external drive. You could do that in Diskpart too, but it's easier to see what you are doing if you use Disk Management to create and format a new partition.


@Milton, it's getting late in Somerset, why not sleep on it and see if it makes more sense in the morning?

Milton said:

My computer is still functioning....phew!
So far so good . Goodnight

Looks like you now have a clean Toshiba ext. drive with no partitions - well done.

Goodnight @Milton, it's late for me too. I'm not a 'morning person' but I'll be back online by lunch time if you need me...

Yes very well done.

Late jumanji .

The easiest way to resolve this problem would or could have been:

1. Download Windows Executable (works without installation):http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-...LF.4.40.exeHDD Low Level Format Tool ver.4.40 This will be a single HDDLLF.4.40.exe
file in the Downloads folder. website: http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-...l-Format-Tool/

2. Plug in only the external storage device on which you want to perform the low level format. ( Remove all other USB storage devices so that there is absolutely no possibility of selecting/performing the operation on a wrong device)

3. Run the HDDLLF.4.40.exe file by clicking on it and “Continue for free” ( rest in pictures )







If you want to perform a diskpart cleanall, do not put a tick mark for Quick wipe. Straightaway "FORMAT THIS DEVICE". It will write zeros to all sectors in the disk.

Whether it is a Quick wipe or full wipe, you can watch the progress in the progress bar.

Once the wipe is completed, initialise the disk as MBR or GPT as appropriate and do a regular format. You can do it with Windows Disk Management.