I said in my original post:
1) everything detected OK (and all my test files)
2) It fails to initialise with cannot find file.
But to directly answer you, yes NTFS. Also pretty hard to format the drive when it refuses to intialise because it is the wrong size.
By initialise I mean. The initialise function from windows 7 disk management. This function is automatically displayed by disk manager when ever you start disk manager and it detects any uninitialised drives. However it would be wrong to initialise this disk when I know it already has a working formatted NTFS file system with working files on it. But having said that I did allow disk manager to attempt the initialisation but it fails with error "Cannot find file".
Even after this failed initialisation I can plug the disk into the e-sata port and see a working NTFS file system with all my files intact.
Before anyone suggests. Yes the SATA ports have been tested with other Seagate drives and power must be present because the disk is detected even though it is detected incorrectly.