Fix External Hard Drive not Formatted Error

Many external hard drive users have encountered such a problem: After you have plugged your external HD into a computer, you can’t open it to access the files because the Windows pops up an error message “You need to format disk in drive before you can use it”or “The disk in drive is not formatted”. Since there are many important files in it, so you never want to do a format at this moment. What can you do under such condition? This post will show you how to fix such external HD errors and make the files in it accessable.
First, let’s learn some common reasons that may cause such drive format errors:

1. Sudden power outage when you are transferring files to your external HDD.
2. Not properly ejection the external hard drive.
3. Virus attacking, or bad sectors in external hard disk.

Second, you can try this method, maybe it will help you open your hard drive.

1. Click Start button, then click Run.


2. Type “cmd” into the blank and click OK. Or you can go to Accessories, and click Command Prompt. Windows 7 users can directly type “cmd” on the Search window in the Start menu.


3. Type “chkdsk c:/f”(if you external hard drive is Drive C) into the Command Prompt window, you can replace the letter c if your external hard drive is not c. Then click Enter button.


4. If it can’t run this process normally, you can try again after restart. It usually takes some time to fix the error, please be patient. When it is finished, your external hard drive may become normal as before.