Format Failed - Cannot Access Hard Drive Now - HELP!

foxman09

Honorable
Aug 27, 2012
23
0
10,510
Hi guys,

I tried to full format an external hard drive and I accidentally unplugged it before it finished. Then I tried to full format it again and about 30% of the way through, an error message appeared saying the format failed. Now my computer cannot access the drive in "my computer", disk management says it cannot initialize it because "The media is write protected," and I tried diskpart to fix this it gives me nothing but errors. I tried this:

DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk (id)
DISKPART> online disk (if the disk is not online)
DISKPART> attributes disk clear readonly

It give me this error message "DiskPart failed to clear disk attributes."

It shows the disk is online. It has no volume so Diskpart says I cannot format it. It won't let me create a volume either because it says it is "write protected."

I also tried some method of accessing the registry as suggested on another forum but the key I needed to fix “Storage Device Policies” wasn't in my registry on either of my laptops.

What do I do?????
 
Solution
Your question has been posted before and could be explained here. Like the top answer, what you should do is download a Linux ISO file from a website and download Universal USB installer. Once downloaded, install the ISO onto a CLEAN usb through the USB installer. Once done, reboot the computer and hold F12 (and if not available, F2 and if that doesn't work go through every individual Function) and select to boot from USB. If done correctly, a Linux Distro will open and you can select either to try the ISO, Clean Boot, or install on Drive. If done a clean boot, the drive will be restored and you can choose to install Linux or Windows on it.

rborunda

Reputable
Apr 16, 2014
10
0
4,520
Your question has been posted before and could be explained here. Like the top answer, what you should do is download a Linux ISO file from a website and download Universal USB installer. Once downloaded, install the ISO onto a CLEAN usb through the USB installer. Once done, reboot the computer and hold F12 (and if not available, F2 and if that doesn't work go through every individual Function) and select to boot from USB. If done correctly, a Linux Distro will open and you can select either to try the ISO, Clean Boot, or install on Drive. If done a clean boot, the drive will be restored and you can choose to install Linux or Windows on it.
 
Solution

Nancyzero

Reputable
Apr 17, 2014
1
0
4,510
It seems that your hard drive broken which cause you data lost so that you computer can not read it.
You can try recovery tool to restore you data first.
4Card Recovery is a good one and you can download it for free. Have a try.

Step 1. Freely download 4Card Recovery.
Step 2. Install it on your computer and run it.
Step 3. Choose the files that you want to recover and click the ‘next’ button to scan it. (Here you need to wait for a moment, so don’t hurry if you find it keep scanning. )
Step 4. Store the recovered data on any other part.