Can't format external hard drive.

My computer is an Acer 3600GT, running XP Home. The original HDD was an 80GB Western Digital - WDC WD80-0JB000JJCO - I replaced it with a 320BG disk a while back.
Over the weekend I bought an external enclosure for the 80GB disk. At first it worked without any problems; I was able to access its data, and copy what I wanted to keep over to the primary disk. My next plan was to wipe the disk entirely and reformat it to NTFS, but that hasn't worked out.
I first tried to erase with Paragon Disk Wiper overnight, but this morning that had an error message saying that the wipe had failed. I then went to Disk Management and tried to reformat directly - that too has given up, saying it was unable to complete the task.
The disk now doesn't show up when I open the My Computer page, although it is visible when I open Safely Remove Hardware. I tried to locate a new driver through Windows in that panel, but it says it can't find anything other the drivers already installed.


Any ideas?

 

I'm not sure about external hard drives, but I'm guessing it shouldn't be much different. Try using DBAN (Daricks Boot and Nuke), that's what I always use and I've never gotten an error. There should be some tutorials on the website, just search DBAN on google, it should be the first one. If you have any problems I'm sure I can help.

 

I'm not sure if DBAN supports external drives since it's a bootable program so you may have to install the 80g drive in the PC in order to wipe it....

 

If you can see the disk in Disk Management and you can't format it as you have already said, then try deleting the partion and then create a new partion and format.

 

Kristofer - thanks for this suggestion but my research tends to support dlb's comment about DBAN's problems with external HD's.
dlb - putting it back in the computer to wipe may yet be the solution, but I'm hoping not.

chaimjm: Followed your suggestion and deleted the partition, but not sure what to do next. The disk description has disappeared from the text list in the upper right hand part of the panel, but is still showing in the lower part as Unallocated - when I click on Properties, Device status message is that the device is working properly.

 

Create a new partion and format. Right click ondrive in the disk manger should give you the option

 

Thanks for the suggestion but in the short time since my last post I thought I might give Paragon Partition Manager a run. It recognised the disk and a format is currently underway.
Just out of curiosity, any idea why the other programs bombed out earlier?

 

Okay - PPM has piked out too. Message was "I/O Error has occurred."
At the suggestion of the program I ran CHKDSK which ran through and then shut itself off before I could record any information. I did see that it had deleted several files but I couldn't tell you what they were.

 

Update - tried chaimjm's suggestion, formatting through Disk Management. It started okay so far as I could tell, but froze up and eventually I got the message that the format had failed.

 

I wonder if I might have found a clue to the problem here:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php
I will give this a run tonight and see what happens.

 

Well, I gave it a run, and the result was the same. Except that it screwed up my main partition - fortunately I'd done a backup, so no harm done.
In frustration I took it to a computer technician and he was unable to reformat to NFTS too, but he was able to restore the FAT32 format and it is working normally again.
It would appear that whatever process was run on this disk by the computer's manufacturer has bound it to FAT32 for all eternity.

 

Thanks Private Fumbler for asking your question and thanks Chaimjm for your answer. I was trying to format a hard drive out of a dead eMachine in an external enclosure. Couldn't get it to work until I deleted the partition, recreated a partition and then it formatted fine. Now I have my external backup drive. Thanks, again, Jim

 

Ah, well, glad I could help.