HDD initialization

Hello, i'm trying to connect an external HDD via eSATA to my notebook. It shows up uninitialized, but when i try to initialize it i get the message "The system cannot find the file specified" under the tab "Virtual Disk Manager".

Yfrog - erri

Disk 1 is the external drive. Any tips on how i could initialize it?

Mesmer said:

Hello, i'm trying to connect an external HDD via eSATA to my notebook. It shows up uninitialized, but when i try to initialize it i get the message "The system cannot find the file specified" under the tab "Virtual Disk Manager".

Yfrog - erri

Disk 1 is the external drive. Any tips on how i could initialize it?

Hi and welcome

sure any good 3rd party app like paragon disk suite, can initialize and add a drive letter.
Paragon is free to try.

Kenn J++

You could also try booting with the external drive in situ, it may be possible to format and tweak it's desired parametres in W7's disk management console in this manner.

Does your laptop have an esata port? Can you try USB?

Go to Disk Management > right click on where it says Disk n (1,2,3,4, or whatever) > Initialize. Then you can right click on the right part and format the disk and assign a drive letter.

Qdos said:

You could also try booting with the external drive in situ, it may be possible to format and tweak it's desired parametres in W7's disk management console in this manner.

For some odd reason, my laptop won't allow me to boot the esata drive, it's just not in the menu. Being a notebook, the BIOS is kinda weak, it's got only boot order and sata mode.

Frostmourne said:

Does your laptop have an esata port? Can you try USB?

My laptop has one of them eSata/USB combo ports. And yes, i have tried using USB and it works perfect.

whs said:

Go to Disk Management > right click on where it says Disk n (1,2,3,4, or whatever) > Initialize. Then you can right click on the right part and format the disk and assign a drive letter.

Well, i'm trying to do just that, but when i click initialize i get the error message that you see in the attached photo.

Mesmer said:

Qdos said:

You could also try booting with the external drive in situ, it may be possible to format and tweak it's desired parametres in W7's disk management console in this manner.

For some odd reason, my laptop won't allow me to boot the esata drive, it's just not in the menu. Being a notebook, the BIOS is kinda weak, it's got only boot order and sata mode.

My advice was there because you'd said it was an external SATA drive (eSATA) and didn't show up in Disk Management - and this could have mean't SATA hotswap was not enabled and therefore the drive could not be recognised by the OS unless you'd booted with it connected (not booted from it...)

You seem to have misinterpreted what my advice was

After installing paragon disk suite, it told me there might be a hardware issue with the HDD, so i figured i should replace the HDD with another one, see if it works. I opened up my desktop, took out the HDD and connected it to eSATA. Surprise! it worked just fine from the first time i plugged it in.

After having a chat with the person that gave me the first HDD, apparently he used it in a RAID configuration and later on it failed, so i guess that's why i got it for free. Still, i find it odd that my two desktops read the HDD via esata and usb, while only the notebook refuses on esata. Could this be because only the notebook works on AHCI mode? i noticed hotswap isn't working on the desktops.

The combo port might not supply enough wattage for the hard drive, but that is unlikely.

A GPT Protective Partition may be causing the issue for you. Here are instructions on how to delete it. Understand that this will result in a loss of any data on the disk.