Hey there,

 

I have a few old 2TB drives I have taken out of my array and would like to format them NTFS... however when I plug them into a windows system, the drive does not detect or mount. What do I have to do to get them formatted NTFS

 

Do I have to load up unbuntu maybe to see the reiserFS ? Let me know if you can... Thanks

It should see it but won't mount it. Look in Disk Management under "Manage" (right-click computer on desktop). You can drop the UR volume and create a new NTFS.

Hey there,

 

I have a few old 2TB drives I have taken out of my array and would like to format them NTFS... however when I plug them into a windows system, the drive does not detect or mount. What do I have to do to get them formatted NTFS

 

Do I have to load up unbuntu maybe to see the reiserFS ? Let me know if you can... Thanks

Windows will not mount the drive as it does not contain a filing system that Windows can handle.

 

You need to go into Windows Disk Manager and delete the existing partition.  Having done that you then create a new NTFS partition, and then format that.

Thanks to all, I spoke too soon.

 

I just loaded up my Ubuntu flash image, booted to that with the drive, and formatted it no problem. Unix solves everything .... ALWAYS haha

 

The windows methods you replied didn't work, appreciate the input, and thank you as always !!

Thanks to all, I spoke too soon.

 

I just loaded up my Ubuntu flash image, booted to that with the drive, and formatted it no problem. Unix solves everything .... ALWAYS haha

 

The windows methods you replied didn't work, appreciate the input, and thank you as always !!

You can do this in Windows, but Disk Manager is not exactly intuitive. I have repartitioned/formatted several of my old unRAID disks to NTFS using only Windows.

I realize this is an old thread but I have a related post/question that may add to this. 

 

I have reformatted several 1TB WD drives that were used in my Unraid server. I simply used Windows disk manager and deleted the old partitions and created a new NTFS basic partition. Then I used these drives in some Windows PCs. I did this quite awhile ago, so this was performed when I was running Windows 7. Since then, I've stopped using the old PCs (and sold off parts). I've kept the hard drives and have been using with external HD docking stations as backup storage for newer Windows 10 machines. Most of these older drives have been chugging along just fine. However, a couple were not recognized by Windows 10. If I determined they were damaged after running WD utilities, I'd disassemble the drives, remove the platters and toss the metal in my recycling bin. The remaining platters make interesting coasters. A couple of these old Unraid drives seem healthy, based on the WD utilities, but Windows 10 will not recognize them. In that case, I used DBAN to wipe the drives and then I reformatted them. Then they seemed to work fine.

 

Recently, one of those 1TB drives which successfully was converted from ReiserFS to NTFS (without wiping) is having problems. My daughter was using it with her Macbook Air and a hard drive docking station to backup her important files. Several months ago, she switched to a Microsoft Surface Pro. The same HD with docking station worked fine with her new computer until a few days ago. It is no longer recognized by Windows 10. It is listed in Disk Managment as a healthy disk drive with a active, primary partition but there's no file system. There's no way to assign a drive letter or volume. The only option is to convert from Basic to Dynamic. I'm afraid if I do convert to Dynamic, she will lose all of her backed up files. I've used recovery software to get her files and have noticed the ReiserFS partition coming up.

 

I'm wondering if Windows 10 has a problem with old ReiserFS drives. Has anyone else come across similar problems?

 

 

Edited May 4, 20206 yr by GreggP