use Dish-formatted hard drive back with windows again

[NABRIL]

Hello
A while back I used a dock and a good old 7200 rpm hard drive that was in my pc to back up some programs from my receiver. I want to install that hard drive back in my pc, and I ask if anyone has done that. Will Windows recognize it and allow me to reformat it? Or will windows not see it since it was formatted by the Dish receiver?

thank you

 

[comfortably_numb]

You'll have to reformat it in Windows. This can be done under Disk Management. Delete the Dish partitions completely, then re-format as FAT32.

The computer may appear to not recognize the drive at first. This is normal. Navigate to Disk Management and you should still be able to see the drive.

 

[NABRIL]

You'll have to reformat it in Windows. This can be done under Disk Management. Delete the Dish partitions completely, then re-format as FAT32. The computer may appear to not recognize the drive at first. This is normal. Navigate to Disk Management and you should still be able to see the drive.

comfortably_numb - you've been here for years and are always so helpful. Thank you very much.

 

[Tony S]

comfortably_numb is right. Use Windows Disk Management and delete the volume (remove partition). A warning message appears saying that the selected partition was not created by windows and might contain data recognized by other operation system. Answer 'Yes' and delete the partition. You might have to change the name of the partition from 'Primary' partition to 'Unallocated'. Then right click on the volume again and select new simple volume and format it the way you want (NTFS, ExFat, etc).

 

[Foxbat]

Or, the old DOS dinosaur in me says start up a Command window (or PowerShell for the newer users) as Administrator and type DiskPart. Select the external hard drive disk (LIST DISK / SELECT DISK "n") and then type "CLEAN". Make sure the "n" in the SELECT DISK "n" is the number of the EHD shown by LIST DISK or Very Bad Things will happen...

Once DiskPart has cleaned the Disk, it appears as a Raw drive with no MBR or Partitions. At this point it is easier to use the Disk Management tool Computer Management to create the partition(s) and Format.