Topic: Formatting an external hard drive
wanttachat's photo
Thu 12/25/08 11:08 AM
For Christmas I got Western Digital My book Essential :banana: when trying to format My Book from Fat32 to NTFS 2 boxes pop up:

Disk Management
The partition My Book (J:) Primary partition is currently in use. To force the deletion of this partion, click Yes.
WARNING: Forcing a deletion might cause unexpected errors in the applicatication that is using this partition. Do you want to continue?
Yes No

Under that...

Logical Disk Manager
The request cannot be completed because the volume is open or in use. It may be configured as a system, boot, or pagefile volume, or, to hold a crashdump file.
OK

Ok...Do I click Yes to force or is that a no no
and i have to do something else if so what???
I really want to play with my gift.

Thanks

adj4u's photo
Thu 12/25/08 11:22 AM
with x p

control panel

administrative tools

computer management

disk management

it should come up in the window in lower right side try making a small partition in it

i have a 750 my book divided it into two partitions using this technic


wanttachat's photo
Thu 12/25/08 11:35 AM
try making a small partition in it


how do I do that?

adj4u's photo
Thu 12/25/08 11:41 AM
Edited by adj4u on Thu 12/25/08 11:48 AM
you have mail

i think my book comes formatted but not sure

been a while

if you right click the drive in the list you will get some options

but if it comes up active that means it is already formatted

try moving a file to it

after rereading you post it sounds like it is ready to use

if it is a large drive it should already be ntsf

wanttachat's photo
Thu 12/25/08 11:51 AM
its a 500GB it states that it is fat32 format

wanttachat's photo
Thu 12/25/08 11:58 AM
Ok I got it...
Found I had to turn off autoplay for My Book then restart computer then reformat

Ahhhh.....

Thanks for the help adj4u

Merry Christmas!!!

adj4u's photo
Thu 12/25/08 12:00 PM
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx