An external hard drive is a device for storing and transferring large amounts of information from one computer to another. Such disks are quite reliable, but sometimes, like any high-tech device, they can fail. If this has nothing to do with various mechanical damage, then the device can be returned to "life".
There are two types of damage to external hard drives, these are: damage caused by mechanical impact on the external hard drive, in which some elements of the device fail. Of course, it is almost impossible to fix such a malfunction with your own hands. Another type - failures of such equipment, which are most often associated with power outages. You can solve this problem yourself using regular formatting.
Standard formatting method
You can use standard Windows operating system software to format the hard disk. To do this, you need to connect the external drive to your computer and then open it. Further, in an empty space, you must right-click and select "Formatting". Here the user will have access to two systems, these are: FAT 32 and NTFS. The first is desirable to use if the hard disk will store files that do not exceed 3.5 GB in volume. The second system is used in all other cases. After selecting the system, you need to click on the "Full format" button and start the procedure. Upon its completion, it will be possible to check the hard disk for operability again and in case it still does not work properly, you need to use other software.
Formatting the hard drive using special software
For example, one of the best utilities proven over the years is Acronis Disk Director. It is distributed absolutely free of charge, which means it can be easily found on the Internet. After installation and launch, you will need to select the manual mode of working with the program. A special window will open in which absolutely all disks installed on the computer will be displayed. The user needs to select an external hard drive and click on the "Format" button. Here you will also need to select a file system from NTFS or FAT32 according to the criteria described above.
You can also use HDD Low Level Format to format the external hard drive. It is worth noting that this software is best suited for "advanced" PC users, since its interface is not so easy to understand. This utility performs low-level formatting of various devices, even those connected via a USB cable. It works with SATA, IDE and SCSI HDDs. After starting this software, the user just needs to click on the LowLevel button located at the very top, select the formatting section, and then click on the Format This Device button.
