False E: drive

[amckee]

Hello,
I've installed a secondary 1 TB hard drive in my new build. This is not a boot drive and will be used for media/file storage only.

When I installed the drive and booted windows I needed to assign it a volume letter. I quick formatted the drive and arbitrarily assigned it to the R: drive. When I opened windows explorer I found that there were 2 new hard drives listed (E: and R.

The E: drive does not have an assigned file system or volume size. When I click to open it I get a notice that I need to format the drive and then it won't let me, stating "Windows was unable to complete the format."

I've tried reformatting the hard drive on Disk Management, but there is no volume E: there. The hard drive is listed as R:, and shows up as a Dynamic drive. I keep formatting and removing volumes on the dynamic drive trying to convert it to a basic drive. When I try this, it tells me that it cannot complete the action because there is still data on the disk.

At this point, I'd like to do two things:
1) get rid of the false E: drive.
2) reconfigure this hard drive as a single-partition basic drive (not dynamic).

Anyone have any great ideas?

Thanks much in advance.

 

[sminlal]

As long as you haven't put any files onto the drive that you want to keep, you could try using the Secure Erase Utility. That should completely wipe the drive, which should hopefully fix the problem.

As a precaution, I'd make sure there are no other drives connected when you do the erase. The last thing you want to do is to erase the wrong drive by mistake!

 

[amckee]

As long as you haven't put any files onto the drive that you want to keep, you could try using the Secure Erase Utility. That should completely wipe the drive, which should hopefully fix the problem.

As a precaution, I'd make sure there are no other drives connected when you do the erase. The last thing you want to do is to erase the wrong drive by mistake!

Well, same problem still. Worth a try though.

 

[sminlal]

This is a 1TB drive, right?

Some USB-connected 3TB drives act like two separate drive letters to get around the 32-bit sector number limitation in the mass storage protocol used with USB drives.

 

[amckee]

The wired thing happens to my ghost wrong drive. When i wanted to make a ghost on e drive and save it on D, however it always end up with wrong drive and got my data gone.

To format disk, why don't you use disk management? I think there is right guide provided by Microsoft Windows.

When i use ghost, it asks me to format drive, then i format, but formatted right drive. It made my mad. But to my relief, i got a free copy of a program down and restored data.

http://www.geeksdo.com/data-recovery/

a page helped me.

Sadly, I have been using Disk Management. It is a 1TB drive (WD Caviar Black). The false E: drive goes away immediately when I disconnect the drive and nothing I do seems to actually format the disk completely so that I can convert it to a basic drive. I bought an open box one, and I think I'm just going to return it.