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Can't get new USB HD working on Windows 10

Anonymous
2022-09-03T03:11:24+00:00

I "inherited" a used (but, I believe, never really used) 2TB WD USB hard drive. I'm on Windows 10 Home, v 10.0.19044

When I plug in the HD, nothing shows up in "This PC" (Explorer).

In Disk Management, I have removed all the previous volumes so I have what's shown here:

I have tried assigning a drive letter (W:) to the disk via Disk Management and can get that to take...once. But then attempting to format tells me that I need to assign a drive letter to the drive, and that "Windows cannot format the volume because the volume is offline."

What's the right way to proceed here, using only Windows tools?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers

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  1. Rodrigo Queiroz 77,425 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2022-09-03T03:56:58+00:00

    Hi Anonymous11847,

    I'm Rodrigo and I will help you.

    Clean the disk on the CMD then, reformat it on the Disk Management.

    To clean the disk, on the Start Menu type diskpart and press enter.

    a CMD window will open showing diskpart.

    Type "list disk" to show all disks available, the disk number matches with the number shown on Disk Management. Type "select disk 1"

    The information will show that disk 1 is selected.

    Type "clean", this will erase the disk and remove all partitions. Now you cna close the CMD window. Back to Disk Management, the disk will be shown with a black bar instead of the blue one. Right click it > New Simple Volume and follow the steps to format it and assign a letter to it.

    In the example below I did it with this disk in my system. It shows as disk 5 on disk management.

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-09-04T01:33:17+00:00

    Thank you! After I did the Clean, I actually had to initialize it, and then select MBR or GPT (I went with GPT) type, and then format - but it's being seen by Windows now with the drive letter I chose.

    Thanks again!

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