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How to reformat Western Digital Element 1 TB

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 stinedk -
Hello,
i just bought the WD 1 TB and I see that everyone says to 'reformat to NTFS'...but I can't seem to figure out how to reformat it. There are no 'menus' to go to ... you just plug it in and start adding to it..
No instructions or manual either.
I don't know if I need to reformat using VISTA or via this WD HDD
HELP!
thx
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7 replies

Answer 1 / 7

Im not saying your wrong but im in the process of formatting a 1 TB external drive to NTFS on XP Pro without any troubles as im writting this. Im unaware of this XP problem as I have never seen it before, however if you are able to format your drive you can find out by,

1 - Connect your external drive so that it can be seen in My Computer,
2 - Right Click on it, and from the drop down menu select Format
3 - Follow the steps, Select NTFS from the drop down menu, Rename yor hard drive if you want to and leave everything else as it is, then click Start.
4 - Profit

If you want you can also Right click on My Computer, and from the drop down menu select Manage, then select Disk Management from your options on the left side when the window opens up. You can format your drive from here simply by right clicking on it again and selecting Format.
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Answer 2 / 7

I'm using Windows XP.

I tried opening My Computer, right clickling my WD Element 1TB drive and choosing 'Format', but it wouldn't let me.

However, men I right clicked My Computer, chose Manage, Diskmanager, right-clicked and chose 'Format' from here, it worked. Formating right now. :-)
Answer 3 / 7

I just went through some hoops when I got a 2TB MyBook Studio drive recently for Christmas. The drive is optimized for Mac. The drive was not recognized by my Dell laptop running Windows XP. After some searching I found the latest disk utility from Western Digital, Acronis True Image WD Edition.

The software immediately recognized the drive and I was able to run a NTFS format that completed in less than a minute. Great stuff.
Answer 4 / 7
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Yes You can format it I have done this before wih a Kinston 4 GB Flash Card But to format The drive to NTFS you need to be using Windows Vista because Windows Xp dosn't support NTFS on removable media which includes flash cards and external HDD's to format to NTFS under Windows Vista Click start>Computer>right click on the hard drive under removable and click format on format propertys under file system click on NTFS then ok the format will take about an hour and half
Answer 5 / 7

SAME PROBLEM< This is how I fixed it.

Dumb asses at WD sent a a cord that was too long. Before you start your tech war. I used the 6" USB 2.0 cable that came with my Portable USB HDD. And what do you know the dumb thing started working fine. So before you format that hard drive try a shorter USB cable. It has to do with voltage drop recived to and from the port. Ask some one who can explain it. I just know how to fix it.! Good luck
Answer 6 / 7

Plug in the 1TB Western Digital drive to power outlet and USB port. Ignore the drive and CD icon on the desktop.
Now, go to your Applications folder on your Mac hard disk. Open Time Machine and choose the new My Essentials Book as the drive to backup as a Time Machine drive.
Click yes to erase the drive and use it for Time Machine.
The My Essentials Book is now Mac formatted and ready to use. It will say Time Machine backup in the icon on your desktop. You can rename this and then reopen Time Machine from your Applications folder, and turn off the Time Machine option, if you choose to.
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rad! I was looking at all kinds of support pages with advice that was way too complicated. I knew it was a simple fix... and you showed me the way! Thanks!
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Thanks for the help :) I'm considering buying a mac and since I just bought my harddrive recently I'd like to just stick with that one ;) one question though: do I have to erase everything on the harddrive before/during reformating?
Answer 7 / 7
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the OS handles formatting
a new drive recieving a full reformat is rather quick as all it has to do is update teh Allocation table and drive labels.
XP had a thig on it as part of SP2 I believe that updated an existing drive from FAT 16 / 32 to NTFS securely without loosing data. This takes a very long time. So long infact it might be beneficial to back up files on that drive wipe it and reformat at same time and reload.
I run linux and reformatting my file servers Drives WD 1000g Green powers only takes 2 minutes to format to my format of EXT3 or one drive runs NTFS incase I ever go back to windows
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Tommo2785, I have just read your post after searching on the net for some advice about formatting WD My Book 1TB. So what you are saying is that I can format this drive to NTFS (if I wish) or to some format that Linux recognises? I would rather format it so that Ubuntu can recognise it because at the moment my Linux OS can't recognise this WD My Book drive. Is this correct??

Cheers
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Ubuntu can read NTFS. I have used many a time a Ubuntu Live CD to access files on a hard drive that the operating system will not start. So I could save his/her files before I reinstalled or troubleshooted the problem
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