Dec 21, 2020 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions
- If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens To Be
- If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens
- If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens
- If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens Will
- If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens For A
The answer is “Yes”. It is indeed possible to recover files from formatted hard drive. However, there’s one condition that you should meet to successfully get your data back. It is important that you should not add new files to the hard disk as this will overwrite the sectors (which were allocated t.
If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens To Be
To format a hard drive means to erase any information on the drive and to set up a file system so your operating system can read data from, and write data to, the drive. You need to format a hard drive if you plan on using it in Windows. As complicated as that might sound, this isn't really difficult to do in any version of Windows. Why happens to a hard drive when you format it eight times? Almost nothing, if you’re using the ‘format’ command provided by your operating system. The days when a disk formatting operation actually wrote over all the disk surface are over 2 decad.
Will formatting a USB completely loses all of its data? Interesting question right? Many of your answers will be yes. But interestingly it won't. In this world of technology, nothing becomes impossible. Even after completely formatting all the files from an exFAT or FAT32 USB flash drive we can completely recover it or even we can repair the damaged data.
Here we explain it in such a way that each one of you can format USB drive without losing data.
Part 1: What Does Format Flash Drive Mean
When we buy a new USB drive, we all make sure that the complete space available in the flash drive is empty. So what happens when we start adding files to the same? We know space starts to get occupied by the files.
But what happens if it is filled and we want to use it again in a fresh manner. There we use the technique called formatting which means we completely erase all the data and files inside the flash drive. So let us see how this works:
When we add data to a USB flash drive it creates a filing system that organizes the data while allowing you to store the most files possible. This virtual filing cupboard organizes your files in a way that makes your USB flash drive perform at its best.
Part 2: Will Formatting Flash Drive Erase Data
The answer to this question is a simple yes. Let us have a quick look at how it happens. Here we talked about organizing files. Files are allocated by certain systems that determine how and where your files are digitally stored. There are mainly 4 types of file systems for storage devices: FAT, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS.
NTFS uses less fragmentation and therefore manages space more effectively. It also excels at transferring files larger than 4GB. However, this system is not always optimal for USB flash drives unless you need to transfer extra-large files.
FAT and FAT32 are supported by nearly every operating system, use less memory, and work faster. The file system exFAT combines the best of both NTFS and FAT for flash drives by reading and writing larger files at a faster speed.
Formatting is not complex either. If you have your flash drive and computer system, you already have all the tools you need.
Step 1: Right-click on your flash drive under My Computer and select Format.
Step 2: Choose from the drop-down menu for the File System to change it to its desired format. The default is generally FAT 32.
Step 3: Uncheck Quick Format if needed.
Step 4: Then, click Start and click OK to bypass the deletion warning.
Part 3: Is It Possible To Format USB Flash Drive Without Losing Data?
Yes, it is possible to format the removable disk without losing data. Let us see how this can be done.
Step 1: Backup data first before formatting
Step 2: Format USB flash drive
These steps don't need many explanations. Before doing the process of formatting you should create a backup of all the files and data of your drive. This can be done by any backup methods of your choice. Simply you can connect it to a computer and copy all the files to it and then do formatting drive.
Part 4: How to Recover Lost Data After Formatting
If you didn't make a backup before formatting or you find some files lost after formatting, are you worried about losing your data? No more worries because Recoverit Data Recovery is going to help you.
Recoverit Data Recovery - The Best File Recovery Software
- Ability to recover all files like photos, videos, documents, etc.
- Can retrieve data from all data loss scenarios.
- Ability to restore data from all storage devices (internal and external) and crashed windows system.
- Video repair tool that can repair corrupted videos under different scenarios.
How to Recover Lost Data From Your Storage Device Using Recoverit
To recover files, first, you have to launch Recoverit on your computer. To make Recoverit Data Recovery run on a Windows computer, you have to double click the 'Wondershare Recoverit' icon on the Desktop. If it is not available on the Desktop, you can enter 'Recoverit' in the search box on your Windows computer. And then click on the App or Choose to 'Open' it.
Step 1: Connect the external device
If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens
Before getting Recoverit started, you need to connect the external device to your computer. Make sure that it can be recognized or detected.
Step 2: Select the external device
To recover lost or deleted files from the removable storage media, please select the device as the target location. And then hit on the 'Start' button. Even though the partition on the device has got lost, you can still use Recoverit to bring the lost data back.
Step 3: Scan the external device
An all-around scan will be launched on the external storage media. Wait a few minutes to finish the scanning. During the process, you can locate the targeted files, as well as pause or stop it.
Step 4: Preview and recover files
Once the scanning ends, you can preview the files from the scanning result. To get the files back, click 'Recover' and save them into another safe location.
Conclusion
When you have lost files, the primary thing you would like to see is whether or not you've got a backup on your computer or other storage media. Just attend the backup and restore all of your files. Regularly creating a backup is extremely important and useful, it can assist you to save longer to recover files from USB drive when data got lost, and otherwise you should get the Recoverit USB Data Recovery software to recover your data back.
USB Topic
- Recover USB Drive
- Format USB Drive
- Fix/Repair USB Drive
- Know USB Drive
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If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens
Summary :
If you are trying to access an external hard drive but are told that your external hard drive needs formatting, you are likely to find the best solutions here. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is the best way to recover data from not formatted hard drive. Then, you can format the hard drive without worrying.
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External hard drive is very useful when you want to copy large files between computers, or back up your important files like photos, videos, documents and other data. They typically have large capacities and can be connected to computer via USB port or FireWire.
External hard drives enjoy different forms, such as SSD, USB flash drive, Sony pen drive and so on, and vary a lot in their capacities from gigabytes to terabyte…However, you may see external USB hard drive not formatted error, saying you need to format the disk before you can use it; considering there are important files on the hard drive, you feel uneasy.
My Seagate External Hard Drive Shows Not Formatted
'So I have a Seagate 3TB External Hard Drive that all of a sudden tells me it needs to be formatted. I have 2.8 TB of files, pictures, videos and more on that drive with no backups of it anywhere. So basically, when it is plugged in, every 10 seconds or so it disappears and then reappears with this pop-up message: 'You need to format the disk in drive G: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?' Obviously I don't want to format it as that means I lose all my data…'
Phenomena: 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 which reads “You need to format disk in drive before you can use it”OR “The disk in drive X is not formatted” (appear in Windows XP).
It seems that such kind of data loss problem happens every day in our daily life. In fact, not formatted error not only happens on external hard drive, but also appears on almost all storage devices such as HDD, SSD, USB flash drive, pen drive, memory card and so on. When not formatted error happens on those devices, Disk management displays their file systems as RAW and users are unable to access the drive in Windows.
Facing such situation, what should you do? Are you going to format the hard drive as you are told? Next, we will tell you more about external hard drive needs formatting.
Why My External Hard Drive Keeps Asking Me to Format It
Before we go to the solutions, we would like to show you the reasons that may lead to this error. In this way, you can avoid the improper operations to your external hard drive OR prevent the terrible things from happening. Below are the possible factors for external hard drive not formatted:
- file system is not recognized by Windows. For instance, file system is Ext 2/3/4.
- The external hard drive suffers from sudden power outage when it is used to transfer files or something else;
- The external hard drive is improperly pulled out or forced to pull out;
- The external hard drive gets virus attack;
- There are bad sectors in the external hard drive.
- …
External Hard Drive Needs Formatting? Not Now!
When running into external hard drive not formatted error, most users have such misunderstanding: they think they have to take Windows' suggestion and have to format the hard drive without other solutions. Because in their minds, only when they can open the external hard drive, they are able to access files stored on the drive.
If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens Will
The reality? It is true that formatting may enable you to regain the access to the external hard drive, but have you ever think about the consequence once you have formatted the external hard drive? Yes you will find no files on the drive after formatting.
Therefore, for those who have no backups, keep this point in mind: DO NOT FORMAT your external hard drive before you take out the data in it. Formatting is a bad idea if the drive is failing, and that procedure means you will lost the file structure (folders, organization, file names…). As a matter of fact, the data in the external hard drive may get recovered as long as they are not overwritten. So remember the more changes you have made, the less chances you have for data recovery.
So how to fix the external hard drive not formatted error and recover data on the hard drive? Well, you need to use the software without altering the data on the drive or get it to someone who can help you out technically. And this article will show you what to do step-by-step.
Solutions to External Hard Drive Not Formatted
If you have not made a piece of backup, you'd better go ahead reading the following content. What should you do to recover data from not formatted hard drive without data backup?
You can try the following methods, maybe they will help you open your hard drive.
Solution 1. Try the Easy Things First
- Connect it to another USB port or another operating system and see if you can read the files.
- Take your chance to restart your computer and see if this way works for you.
- Run anti-virus software to check and kill possible virus on the external hard drive.
These may seem meaningless but sometimes they do help people get out of trouble. If no miracle happens, try the second solution.
Solution 2. Check Your Hard Drive for Errors
- At the Start button, click Run.
- Type “cmd” into the blank and hit Enter key.
- Type “chkdsk n:/f” (replace n with the true drive letter of the problematic partition) into the Command Prompt window and then press the Enter button.
- It will start repairing damaged files and you will see some of your filenames before it finally asks if you want to save lost chains into another location. Click 'Yes' just in case.
If CHKDSK can run this process normally, you can try again reading your external hard drive after restarting your computer. CHKDSK usually takes some time to fix the error, so please be patient. When it is finished, your external hard drive may become normal as before.
However, if you are unable to go through this process, and encounter the following message: the type of the file system is RAW, CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives, what should you do?
Any other tips for how to restore these files from not formatted external hard drive?
Solution 3. Recover Data from Not Formatted Hard Drive
If your external hard drive keeps asking you to format it after you have tried the above solution, you can download free MiniTool Power Data Recovery which is an excellent program that brings file recovery to Windows to have a try. This software works great on Windows 7/8/8.1/10, both 32 bit and 64 bit, and is able to recover the mainstream file types on audio, video, image, email, documents, etc. With this tool, you can easily get your inaccessible files out from unformatted hard drive (RAW drive).
MiniTool Power Data Recovery composes of four data recovery parts, and they are This PC, Removable Disk Drive, Hard Disk Drive, and CD/DVD Drive. Before you choose any part to begin, you can move the mouse over them to identify whether the external hard drive appears for you to perform data recovery.
Follow these steps to recover data from not formatted hard drive:
Step 1. Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery, and then select 'This PC' as the RAW partition is shown there (shown as Unidentified). You should be able to identify the external hard drive which needs formatting, double-click on it.
If You Format A Hard Drive What Happens For A
Step 2. Then please wait for the scanning process to finish. The scanning time depends on the capacity of your data in it. When finished, Power Data Recovery will show you the files it has found in tree structure. At this time, you can check whether the files are the one you want.
Note: You can pause/stop the progress once you have found the lost files from the left catalog. Besides, you can press 'Filter' button to choose specific file types to be shown in the middle pane.
Step 3. In this step you are expected to tick the files you want, click 'Save' and then choose a safe location (usually it is another hard drive) to store all data you have selected. However, the Trial Edition do not support file saving. At this time, you need to purchase a license from official MiniTool.
At the end of the process, you can format the external hard drive by using Disk Management or MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. Both are OK to help format your external hard drive. Their differences are the latter one offers more flexible features and is more user-friendly.
Run “diskmgmt.msc” to load Disk Management, then select the partition which needs formatting and choose “Format” from the context menu. Just follow the guidance to finish. (See Also: Windows Was Unable to Complete the Format)
In Partition Wizard, you have more file system choices. Click on the partition of the external hard drive which needs formatting and then choose 'Format'. Select the file system you want and click 'Apply' finally.
Why Some Files Are Corrupt after the Recovery
Sometimes, you may find out that you are unable to access the recovered files from not formatted external hard drive and Windows tells they are corrupted. You may wonder how it is corrupted because the last time you open it, it is in sound condition.
Here, we would like to inform you that MiniTool Power Data Recovery can only help you recover the lost files with their original states, instead of changing anything on them such as repair the corrupted files or destroy the files. That is to say, if the files Power Data Recovery recovered are corrupted, they were corrupted before the recovery due to some certain reasons before your external hard drive requires formatting. In this case, if the files mean a lot to you, then it is better to find a reliable data repair service to help you out - which is normally a huge expense.
Bottom Line
In this article, we mainly focus on how to fix external hard drive that saying 'external hard drive needs formatting'. Also, you may run into pen drive not formatted error due to the similar reasons. The good news is that Power Data Recovery is possible to recover data in all kinds of hard drives including the pen drive.
All in all, if the data in it is meaningless or you have backups, format it directly. If not, you should recover data from not formatted hard drive or turn to the other solutions offered in this post before formatting. If you have any questions while using MiniTool software, don’t hesitate to contact us via [email protected]. For any questions or suggestions, please leave us comments below, we read every thread.
External Hard Drive Needs Formatting FAQ
When you get a new external hard drive, you need to create and format new partitions on it to make it usable. When there are file system problems on the external hard drive, formatting is the best way to regain access to the partition.
Formatting will define the file system and cluster size of the partition. So, when there are file system errors, or you want to change the file system, or you want to change cluster size of the partition for extending purpose, formatting is the best way.
Formatting will not erase everything on a hard drive, it only removes the address table. So, when you format a partition in Windows, be aware that data deleted has the opportunity to get recovered by professional data recovery tools.
- Use Disk Management: open Disk Management > select a partition of the external hard drive > choose Format from the context menu > follow the wizard to complete.
- Use diskpart.exe: run diskpart as admin > type list volume and press Enter > type select volume n and press Enter > type format fs=ntfs quick and press Enter.
- Use MiniTool Partition Wizard: select a partition of the external hard drive and choose Format > choose a file system > click OK and Apply.