Windows 7 - External crashed asks to reformat cannot reformat

I dont know if this is the right place but sounds right, My wd 1 tb my book has gone weird, yesterday it randomly popped up saying the drive needs to be formatted to be used. It already had 100 gb's worth of files on it. I tried reformating it but it said it failed. Now I cannot even get it to load on my computer. I unoinstalled the driver reinstalled it and then it pretty much freezes my computer up. once i unplug the drive it pops up saying i need to format the drive and my computer speeds right back up. Im so frustrated! I just want to reformat it so I can use it again.

Any one? I would like to solve this problem so I dont have to buy a new one

Check, if the drive gets power (listen if it spins up). When my 500gb crashed, the electronic of the enclosure was faulty.
The drive inside is just a regular WD, so you could always put it in a desktop as a slave or just get a new enclosure.

-DG

yea it powers up you can hear it spins. hmm well its under warranty for walmart and I could get a 2 tb one in exchange so ill probably do that. I've never had this problem before.

Well im giving it one last ditch effort before I hopefully ship it back. im using diskpart and I can select it as drive 1 and but when i type clean it hangs up and wont clean it. I'm going to let it try over night but im guessing its not going to go. Any one think of a better way to reformat it? If i click on it while in explorer or my computer it just freezes the whole computer.

Trading it in for a new one sounds like a great deal. Getting a free 2TB.
Never actually had the problem before, but like Sledge said, you could always just toss the HDD inside of it into your computer.

Well im running it on a laptop otherwise i would skip the hassle and put in it my computer. Only problem with trading it in is its through walmarts replacement program and I have to send it out through ups so im assuming I have to get a box and blablabla. Looks like if this diskpart doesnt work thats how I will spend my saturday.

Haha, yeah. I unno, just drive up to a FedEx store or something, and do it like that. Kinda sucks you can't exactly drive up to a Walmart and do it that way, but stuff happens. I personally don't know whats up with the external, I'm sure i'd probably have a whack at it if i messing with it in real life, but yeah. that 2TB sounds real nice compared to a 500Gb. Only problem i've had computer wise so far is some bsod's here and there, and Killer Xeno Pro and Windows Live messenger not getting along.

Yeah I tried to let it clean while i slept but four gours later and nothing still saying try to clean and the externals lights are flashing like its trying to do something. Another weird thing is that it says its got only 451 kb of memory available if u right click on it and press properties. but in diskpart it sholws all 931 ( 1 tb).Ill just switch it out 1 tb for a 2 tb. I dont know if I want to get a WD though. Also would it be worth it to get another 1 tb but its esata? I have one port on my laptop and read that for externals usb are just as fast.

Have you tried running the WD hard drive diagnostic?