External hard drive won't format

[Cote65]

Hello. I am an avid Xbox gamer wanting to record my games to up load. I got a Seagate 4T 3.0 that works perfectly for saving my games. If I wish to use it to record my games for uploading I must format the external hard drive to ntfs. Here lies the problem. It's suppose to ask me once I connect my ex hard drive to my PC. It does not. I've tried through disk management, my computer, control panel etc it won't prompt me to format. Initialize yes but format to ntfs no. I did initialize it from mbr to gpt. Regardless which one I use I cannot prompt it to format. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Cheers.

 

[Bighorn]

I don't know what it means but I got a new WDC 4TB USB HDD about a year ago and it came factory-formatted as exFAT, single partition. If it will initialize it should at least be able to have 2 partitions as NTFS. A method I prefer with difficult drive issues is to either use a dock on Linux Mint computer or boot to a Linux Mint LiveDVD, both with GPARTED on them, or download the GPARTED LiveCD .iso file to create the bootable disc.

 

[StevenG]

How are you connecting your Seagate 4T 3.0 to your PC? Is this HDD the ‘Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4TB USB 3.0 2.5" External Hard Drive HDD’ or is it through a direct and an internal SATA connection? There are allot of variables to your question! In Win-10 if you connect an external USB drive it automatically comes up in 'File Explorer' and is visible there. if its visible in ‘File Explorer’, then, right click on your Seagate 4T 3.0 drive e.g. Seagate (F for NTFS you should chose ‘format’ > ‘file system’ > NTFS/Allocation unit size=4096 bytes. > START. There are other choice for 'File systems' of either NTFS/FAT/FAT32 (Default)/exFAT with many options for 'Allocation unit size'.

Just remember:
GPT drives tend to include a “protective MBR.” This type of MBR says that the GPT drive has a single partition that extends across the entire drive. If you try to manage a GPT disk with an old tool that can only read MBRs, it will see a single partition that extends across the entire drive. This protective MBR ensures the old tools won’t mistake the GPT drive for an unpartitioned drive and overwrite its GPT data with a new MBR. In other words, the protective MBR protects the GPT data from being overwritten.

Windows can only boot from GPT on UEFI-based computers running 64-bit versions of Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, and corresponding server versions. All versions of Windows 10, 8, 7, and Vista can read GPT drives and use them for data—they just can’t boot from them without UEFI.

Other modern operating systems can also use GPT. Linux has built-in support for GPT. Apple’s Intel Macs no longer use Apple’s APT (Apple Partition Table) scheme and use GPT instead.

You’ll probably want to use GPT when setting up a drive. It’s a more modern, robust standard that all computers are moving toward. If you need compatibility with old systems — for example, the ability to boot Windows off a drive on a computer with a traditional BIOS — you’ll have to stick with MBR for now.