Fix Format Error: Disk in Drive Is not Formatted Want to Format now?
If you accidentally meet this kind of format error “The disk in drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now?” Do not format it straight away! More similar situations can be seen here and there,
“When I connected Canon digital camera SD memory card to the computer via a card reader, Windows detected the memory card and showed as Removable Drive under My Computer. But when I try to access the drive, it said ‘the drive is not formatted, would you like to format it now?’ I have plenty of precious photos and video chips insides the card. How could I get them out before formatting the card?” – by Daniel
“When I connected Canon digital camera SD memory card to the computer via a card reader, Windows detected the memory card and showed as Removable Drive under My Computer. But when I try to access the drive, it said ‘the drive is not formatted, would you like to format it now?’ I have plenty of precious photos and video chips insides the card. How could I get them out before formatting the card?” – by Daniel
“I have a D drive and every time i try to access a folder in that drive it keeps saying ‘Drive not formatted, do you want to format it now?’ But another partition under that drive works fine. I don't want to format it because I need the files. The drive also acts really slowly on any of the other files I click on. How to fix the problem and make my folder become alive?” – by Rose
“My Western Digital external hard drive recently didn’t let me view the data insides. Windows sometimes won’t recognize it well thus each time I try to open it says disk in drive not formatted error. I followed it but very wired it won’t let it format. Any way to fix the error?” - by Jack
This kind of problem happens more frequently on removable devices such as USB thumb pen drive, SD memory card, external hard drive etc. It says you have to format the disk and sometimes it won't let you format by showing some errors. This kind of problem is generally called "format error".
Possible reasons
1. The device is too old and can be corrupted with time went on. As you know no hardware can be life-long ever.
2. There are bad sectors in the specific area of the disk that is required for a file system, e.g. for a boot sector or the FAT table sector. Since such a drive is obviously not possible to use, Windows refuses to format it.
3. Sometimes, you cannot format the drive to the FAT file system if it has been formatted to a file system which is not recognized by Windows. Such a drive should be reformatted to NTFS first, and then to the FAT file system.
4. Some incompatibilities in the drivers or BIOS are possible to result in such an error. It makes sense to try to format the drive on another computer. In most cases, the incompatibility problem only concerns the format procedure. Once the drive is formatted, it would work fine.
Solution to fix the format error
#1. Try the problem hard drive or external removable media on another computer (better be most common Windows OS). See if the device can be accessed normally. This way can clear the buffers and eliminate incompatibility. Sometimes it will let the error disappear and make the drive work normally again.
#2. If the first method still won’t help. Try recovering the data with some free data recovery programs first of all. If you are running Windows, you can use TestDisk,Pandora Recovery, Recuva etc. For Mac OS X users, turn to the posting free Mac file rescue software I wrote.
#3. After the files are recovered, then follow those steps to try format the error drive (if you are using memory card or flash drive, connect it to your PC first). My computer ->Properties -> Manage -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management -> select the problem drive and then format it from here. Or if this won't help, use this third-party HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool to format.
#4. It’s not over. After formatting, try use the data recovery software recommended in #2 to re-scan the drive to see if you can harvest more data. Note: format won’t make the data erased permanently right away. Learn why from this recover formatted card post for the why part.
Is the solution here helpful to fix such format error on your drive? Will the message “The drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now” still appear? Or any new problems occur? Please let me know if you are kind enough, I will do my best to help.
This kind of problem happens more frequently on removable devices such as USB thumb pen drive, SD memory card, external hard drive etc. It says you have to format the disk and sometimes it won't let you format by showing some errors. This kind of problem is generally called "format error".
Possible reasons
1. The device is too old and can be corrupted with time went on. As you know no hardware can be life-long ever.
2. There are bad sectors in the specific area of the disk that is required for a file system, e.g. for a boot sector or the FAT table sector. Since such a drive is obviously not possible to use, Windows refuses to format it.
3. Sometimes, you cannot format the drive to the FAT file system if it has been formatted to a file system which is not recognized by Windows. Such a drive should be reformatted to NTFS first, and then to the FAT file system.
4. Some incompatibilities in the drivers or BIOS are possible to result in such an error. It makes sense to try to format the drive on another computer. In most cases, the incompatibility problem only concerns the format procedure. Once the drive is formatted, it would work fine.
Solution to fix the format error
#1. Try the problem hard drive or external removable media on another computer (better be most common Windows OS). See if the device can be accessed normally. This way can clear the buffers and eliminate incompatibility. Sometimes it will let the error disappear and make the drive work normally again.
#2. If the first method still won’t help. Try recovering the data with some free data recovery programs first of all. If you are running Windows, you can use TestDisk,Pandora Recovery, Recuva etc. For Mac OS X users, turn to the posting free Mac file rescue software I wrote.
#3. After the files are recovered, then follow those steps to try format the error drive (if you are using memory card or flash drive, connect it to your PC first). My computer ->Properties -> Manage -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management -> select the problem drive and then format it from here. Or if this won't help, use this third-party HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool to format.
#4. It’s not over. After formatting, try use the data recovery software recommended in #2 to re-scan the drive to see if you can harvest more data. Note: format won’t make the data erased permanently right away. Learn why from this recover formatted card post for the why part.
Is the solution here helpful to fix such format error on your drive? Will the message “The drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now” still appear? Or any new problems occur? Please let me know if you are kind enough, I will do my best to help.
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