Boremc said: i have a WD external USB 3.0 hard drive but the shield can't recognize!! I formatted in exFAT, but nothing. Hi ( sorry 4my english ) I had the same problem with 2tb segate: solution: Connect usb drive to Nvidia Shield 5.02 firmware ( shield storage menu should show your usb drive as ' safety unmount ' ( or simillar)) Connect usb drive to pc and you need format. Ensure your external hard drive is in the correct format (exFAT, HFS, FAT32, or APFS) Users report the most success using APFS or HFS Use an adapter that lets you plug your iPhone or iPad into power at the same time–like the Apple lightning camera adapter Inspect your external hard drive, cables, and ports for signs of physical damage.

Hard Drive Recovery After Format

I cloned my hard drive onto an ssd. The ssd works if I plug it in by itself but the hard drive is no longer found/recognized (most of the time). Every now and then, the regular hard drive will show up. I tried connecting it through different cables but it has not fixed the issue. Any ideas on what I can do? I'm selling my old pc and I'd like to be able to include the hard drive

Luis, welcome to these user forums.

You should not be trying to boot your PC with two identical, cloned drives installed - these have the same disk signature and booting Windows like this will cause unpredictable results.

You should have either one or the other drives installed in your computer, not both.

If the SSD works fine to boot when on its own, then reformat the old HDD drive then reconnect it on a different SATA cable.

Hard Drive Not Showing Up After Format

That is the issue though. The old hard drive won't boot unless I also plug in the SSD (even then, it rarely is detected). It's connected on a different SATA cable as well.

The old hard drive isn't visible so I'm not sure how to reformat it

Luis, sorry but you should not be trying to boot from the old drive if the SSD will boot correctly. Get yourself a USB to SATA connector, or drive dock or caddy to connect the old HDD to the computer then format it that way, or take it to another computer to connect it and format it.

Acronis Links : Acronis Scheduler Manager : Acronis VSS Doctor : Backup Archive Compatibility : Cleanup Tool (ATIH 2010-2021) : Cloning Disks : Contact Acronis Support : Difference between Backup and Disk Clone

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I'm trying to boot from the old hard drive by itself but that isn't happening. That is my issue since I want to sell my old pc with the old hard drive without having to include my ssd. However, connecting both drives is the only way to sometimes get into my old hard drive.

I don't believe it is a connection issue. This only started happening when Acronis came along. I'll try to reformat it by connecting to another pc. That does seem to be my only option at this point. Is there a reason why the Acronis software would prevent my old hard drive from being recognized?

*I forgot to mention that the old hard drive always starts up and spins. Just not detected under Disk Management or Acronis True Image

Luis, when you are connecting just the old HDD are you connecting it to the exact same SATA controller port and cable as you use for the working SSD drive?

If the old HDD does not work when connected exactly in place of the SSD, then I would suggest cloning from your SSD to the HDD so that the latter is then identical to the working SSD.

Please see post: 128231: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this!!!

Luis, the idea is that when you try to boot a computer where 2 identical disks are connected (your old hard drive and the SSD), one of them gets assigned a new disk identificator by Windows operating system, in order to be able to distinguish between them, which makes one of them unbootable. This is 'by design' and expected behavior. You should not attempt booting your hard disk, when the old SSD is still connected, and vice versa - do not boot the SSD while the hard disk is still plugged in.

In order to resolve the problem you need to 1) perform the cloning, but do not reboot when the cloning is complete, 2) when the cloning job finishes, physically disconnect the SSD disk, 3) reboot.

The problem in your case was that you swapped steps 2 and 3, rebooting before unplugging the SSD.

If the computer still does not boot, even after completing the three steps, you need to enter BIOS settings and make sure that the hard disk is the first boot device in the boot priority / boot order list.

Regards,

Slava

How To Format New Hard Drive Pc

Summary :

Accidentally Converted External Hard Drive to 'ESD-USB'? Can we recover files after converting the external drive to ESD-USB with ease? Yes, MiniTool Software can help us! But, how to to revert the ESD-USB drive to normal?

Problem: Last week, I used my external hard drive (1TB) to create installation media for Windows to do a clean install of Windows 10 on my laptop. However, after completing the installation, my hard drive came up as ESD-USB of 32GB.

What happened to my hard drive? What should we do if we converted the external hard drive to ESD-USB by mistake?

In this situation, can we recover files after converting the external drive to ESD-USB with ease? What’s more, is it possible to restore the external hard drive to its full capacity?

Now, in today’s post, I am going to show you how to effectively recover lost files from ESD-USB 32GB drive as well as how to revert the ESD-USB drive to normal.

Quick Video Guide:

Part 1. Recover Files after Converting A Drive to ESD-USB

No doubt, we can create a Windows bootable drive by using some tools like Microsoft Media Creation Tool and then use the created drive to clean install Windows 10.

However, most users have reported that their hard drive (neither external hard drive nor USB flash drive) came up as ESD-USB of 32 GB after creating this installation media, according to a survey.

As a result, they could not find their original data stored on this drive. Therefore, more and more users want to know whether they can recover lost files from their drives.

Now, the good news is that MiniTool Power Data Recovery, a piece of professional and simple data recovery software developed by a famous software development company based in Canada, can help to recover lost files completely, easily and quickly.

Besides, this professional and all-in-one program offers wizard-like interfaces and simple operations which can help users complete data recovery without any difficulty. To be honest, even our grandmother can easily use this tool to deal with data loss situations because of its detailed instructions.

What's more, it is a read-only tool. In other words, we can use this all-in-one program tool to recover lost data without bringing any damage to the original data.

Next, let's see the detailed steps of data recovery.

Step by Step Guide to Recovering Lost Data after Converting A Drive to ESD-USB

Before you do:

Download MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

MiniTool offers 8 license types to meet the diverse needs of users: Free, Personal Standard, Personal Deluxe, Personal Ultimate, Business Standard, Business Deluxe, Business Enterprise and Business Technician. You can see Compare License Type to select the best one for you.

Install this tool on the drive. It is recommended to install it on a separate drive or make data recovery bootable disk by using a CD/DVD or USB flash drive.

Connect your external drive to your computer.

Step 1. Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery to get its main interface as follows.

Here, MiniTool Power Data Recovery offers 4 recovery modules to help you solve different data loss issues. To be specific:

• This PC: focuses on recovering lost or deleted data from damaged, RAW or formatted partitions.
• Removable Disk Drive: is designed to recover lost photos, mp3/mp4 files, and videos from USB drives and SD cards.
• Hard Disk Drive: can recover files after partition loss or deletion.
• CD/DVD Drive: helps to recover data from formatted or erased CD/DVD discs.

Step 2. Click the Hard Disk Drive, select the target drive and then click the Scan button to begin searching partitions on it.

Step 3. Choose all the needed files, and then click the Save button to store them in a safe place.

If you do not know whether a file should be recovered, the feature, “Preview”, makes it possible to view some types of files like pictures before recovering, as shown below.

If MiniTool Power Data Recovery finds and lists a lot of files, you can turn to the Filter feature to filter needless files by file name, file extension, file size, and creation or modification date.

After recovering lost data, let's see how to fix this issue: accidentally converted hard drive to ESD-USB.

Part 2. 3 Ways to Fix - Converted External Hard Drive to ESD-USB Mistakenly

Let’s begin with a true example from the Microsoft Community.

Accidentally Converted External Hard Drive to 'ESD-USB' Ever since I got my Yoga 3 I have been having numerous problems with Windows 10. Finally, I decided to do a clean install of Windows 10 which involved installing the OS from an external drive. I did not know when downloading the pertinent installer onto the external it would format it into an ESD USB (I have no idea what that means).

Here, can we revert the external hard drive back to normal?

Of course, we can restore the external hard drive back to its full capacity. Here are 3 solutions to help you!

Method 1: Check and Fix Errors

Connect the external drive to your computer and check if it shows up in the Windows Disk Management window. Note: If it doesn't show up in Disk Management, you can click the Action tab and choose Rescan Disks, as shown below.

Open Command Prompt (Admin). If you don't know how to open it, you can find answers from this post: How to Open the Command Prompt as Administrator in Windows 8 or 10.

Enter the command: chkdsk X: /f (where x is the external drive letter) and press the Enter key. (This step helps check the drive for the errors and fix it automatically.)

Enter the command: exit and press Enter key.

Now, you can check if you are able to see the full capacity of the external hard drive.

Method 2: Create A New Partition

In general, since you have recovered lost data by using MiniTool Power Data Recovery, you can directly create a new partition while keeping this Windows restoration partition.

Open the Windows Disk Management window.

Right-click the unallocated space and then click New Simple Volume.

Click on the Next button.

Type in how many MB (1 GB = 1024 MB) you want to use from the unallocated partition to create the new partition with, and then click on the Next button.

Select an available drive letter, and then click the Next button.

Type in a volume label, check the Perform a quick format box and click the Next button.

Click Finish.

Method 3: Format It to NTFS

Sometimes, after converting the external hard drive to ESD-USB by mistake, you will find the drive shows up but is RAW. (picture below)

Now, you can format it.

Hard Drive Not Showing Up After Formatted

When it comes to drive formatting, you can turn to Disk Management, DiskPart, third-party tool and other tools.

MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free and professional partition magic software is strongly recommended here since its wizard-like interfaces as well as simple operations can help us easily and quickly format drives.

If you want the detailed steps, you can read this post: How to Format a Hard Drive with Ease?

Bottom Line

Have you ever mistakenly converted your hard drive to ESD-USB? What should you do if your external hard drive has shrunk to 32GB?

Now, after reading this post, you have picked up 3 solutions to restore a hard drive to its full capacity as well as the secret of how to effectively, completely and safely recover lost data after converting the external drive to ESD-USB.

Should you have any questions or suggestions about MiniTool tools, you can leave us comments in the comment zone or directly contact us via [email protected]. We will solve your issues as soon as possible.