Fomatting external hard drive for back up

[mark duncan]

Have just bought a new 1tb hard drive. Plugged it in the b2 and it said the drive was not recognised as expecting fat. The drive was exfat. I selected format c from the maintenance menu and it said partitioning for about a minute and then formatting for about 2 seconds. Then the display returned to the clock. I checked the usb menu and it still said unrecognised. I tried formatting again and when the display went bak to normal the hard drive was still flashing away like mad. Does this mean the formatting was still going on or would it format 1tb in just a couple of seconds?

[Mark Fishman]

It should take longer than a few seconds to format 1 1TB drive.

Does this external drive expect to get its power from the USB connection, or does it have its own plug-in power supply? The B2 doesn't supply very much power via its USB ports, so if there's no separate power supply it is possible that your drive is simply not getting enough power to work reliably.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Mark D,

In addition to Mark F's post above, it would be worth trying to use the USB A port instead.  USB A port delivers more power than USB C, so that might make a difference.

Regards,

Peter.

[mark duncan]

Thank you Mark and Peter for replies. Yes it is a device that uses power from the usb port. It is one of these slime pocket drives.

Have tried usb a and got the same result. Display said "partioning" for about a minute and then "formatting" flashed on the display but then reverted to the clock. I tried rebooting the b2 and it still said "expecting fat"

I have tried reformatting using my iMac but that failed. It reid to format as MS Dos (FAT) but after a minute or so the operation failed. The error message was "could mofify partition map" I have tried various reformatting option but they all failed. The last time Idid it it said "could not open device" I have probably messed it right up now but could be a faulty drive possibly? I bought it on eBay as a generic device but it is actually a Hitachi so should be OK. I will contact the seller for help.

Thanks

[Mark Fishman]

If you cannot format it on your iMac then yes, possibly the drive is faulty.

Just to be sure, try formatting it as some other format. On a Mac, MS-DOS  partition table with a partition type of HFS+ should be relatively common. If you can't get the Mac to see the drive after that, then maybe it's faulty.

One more thought: I don't suppose the drive case has some kind of "read-only" or "write-protection" switch on it?

-- m.

[mark duncan]

Hi Mark. Not sure how to do what you suggest. The only ms dos option seems to be msdos (fat). I am no expert on these matters. Have checked the drive and cannot see any switches. Seems quite a basic unit. Thanks for suggestions. I am in contact with the seller who has asked for pictures of the error so I am trying that route for now. 

Thanks

[David Catino]

This is the same issue that have been experiencing, I have tried 3 different external hard drives, I followed the recommendation to format as you did, and still not recognized.  today I inserted a Thumb Drive and the B2 recognized the drive giving the menu options.

Brennan Please advise.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi David,

The issue could be that the USB disk is formatted as GPT (GUID Partition Table) rather than MBR (Master Boot Record).  This is gobbledygook for saying that you will need a more powerful formatting program than the B2 can provide, to convert the USB device format from GPT to MBR.

The GPT partition format is becoming more popular these days because it removes a number of limitiations that the MBR partition suffers from, one of the big issues being that MBR has a maximum partition size of 2TB, whereas the GPT format enables much larger partitions.

In my case, I resolved this issue (two out of three of my USB HDDs were GPT partitioned) by using 'Acronis Disk Director Home' which can reformat any drive.  There are some free options out there, such as 'EaseUS Partition Master Free', so for a one-off job, this should work for you.

Let us know if this helps, or if this doesn't resolve the problem.

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi David,

I forgot to say that this formatting will need to be performed on a PC/ Mac computer. 

Regards,

Peter.

[David Catino]

Peter

I followed your lead on the free trial of  'Acronis Disk Director Home'   and just formatted the external drive as Fat32, B2 didn;t recognize it. In B2 I Formatted my external drive and then it  recognized  the drive and I am now backing up to USB-C.  Thanks

Dave C

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Dave,

Great news then.  Yes, I forgot to document that the drive will still need to be formatted by the B2 after the 'Acronis' has first formatted it.  The 'Acronis' reformats the drive from a 'GPT' to a 'MBR' partition which enables the B2 to recognise the drive, but the B2 still needs to run its own format process.

So a happy ending then!  And thanks for the feedback, that helps others in the future.

Regards,

Peter.