URGENT: how to patition and format USB attached drive ?

[ktnwin]

I have been using USB attached drive for many years, it works great if the drive has been formatted.

Here is my new problem:
1) I have a new USB box, I add a brand new hard disk in it, this drive has never been partitioned nor formatted
2) I connect this to my WinXP PC, the PC sees that there is drive 1 attached, however, there is no partition on it (using Disk Management tools)

When I right click on the drive 1 box, the "Create Partition" selection is grayed out and therefore I cannot create a partition for this USB drive.

Does anyone of you know a way to do this ?

Of course, if I open my PC and connect the SATA drive directly to the motherboard, the procedure above will work. But I do not want to open my PC unless this is the only way.

I appreciate all ideas.

[ROF]

How makes the drive in question? Did you try the installation software from the manufacturer?

[CobraPilot]

This article from the Feb 21, 2006, issue of PC Magazine may be helpful, although it deals with putting a PATA drive in an external case. Maybe there's a hint here you could use.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1916862,00.asp

[aedipuss]

you might try the drive manufacturer's website to see if there are h.d. tools available. find one that does low level formatting and try that, then partition and format to ntfs.

[ktnwin]

Hi CobraPilot,
thanks for the link to the article, it seems to be exactly what I need.
USB enclose for PATA or SATA hard drives are quite universal and need NO drivers for WinXP.
I just never had to create a partition for a brand new "USB" drive like this. My previous one (2.5") have been partitioned and formatted before I put in the USB box.

Worst come to worst, I have to open my PC then connect the virgin SATA drive to partition and format it as usual.

[Skith]

Do any of the following apply?

link to microsoft documentation

You could also try partitioning and formatting the drive via command prompt (since it does show up in disk management).

Two tools used are DiskPart.exe MS documentation. Of interest are the;
list disk, list volume, and list partition
create partition efi [size=n] [offset=n] [noerr]
create partition extended [size=n] [offset=n] [noerr]
create partition logical [size=n] [offset=n] [noerr]

and of course the Format command.

Keep in mind these commands will destroy data if used on the wrong drives.

[Seeker47]

I have been using USB attached drive for many years, it works great if the drive has been formatted.
Does anyone of you know a way to do this ?
. . .
Of course, if I open my PC and connect the SATA drive directly to the motherboard, the procedure above will work. But I do not want to open my PC unless this is the only way.

You should be able to do this with the shareware program, DFSEE. ( http://www.dfsee.com/ ). It is available for several platforms, including Linux. Like all shareware, you can try it out for a period before you decide to purchase it. (And, unlike some shareware, I don't this this is crippled for any of its functionality.)

I did formatting and partitioning this way on a Seagate 200 Gig HDD in an external drive shell recently. It wasn't SATA, but if I had a SATA drive + SATA / USB drive shell, I don't think there would have been a problem.

Some things to consider: This is largely menu-driven, not requiring command line operation, but not a slick GUI either. (Not like Partition Magic, for instance.) On the continuum between Noob-ish to hacker-ish tools, it is probably still somewhere past the midway point, in the direction of the latter. The more you know about the tech side of HDD sectors & partitions, the more you can do with this tool, and the less likely you are to get into trouble. There is pretty good support for this tool, via email and an online forum. (Maybe only for registered users, though ?) Certain operations done with external drives, such as cloning HDDs, can take a loooong time. Turns out USB-2 isn't as fast as you thought.

[pepegot1]

I used Partition Magic 8.0 to do mine.

[ktnwin]

I folled the link given by CobraPilot, and the linked document shows WinXP has built in capabilities to partition the USB connected drive and then format it (I do quick format).
The trick is to right click on the icon Drive 1 which has an exlamation mark on it, then select Initialize. Once that is done, I move to the right box (unallocated) , right click again and this time the Create Partition selection is shown. The issue I had is this selection was grayed out.
It's working now.
I dont' know if there are any advantage to use Partition Magic or other software to do this.