i have a hard drive from my old computer that i have put into my new computer, it has all my documents and programs and everything on it but i can't get to the files cause the drive hadent even been assigned a letter so i assigned it a letter but now it says it needs to be formatted to NTSF.....so, will doing a quick format on my hard drive erase all my files?
It's the hair
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Yes, it will. Go into "Computer Management" under "Administrative Tools" and then click "Disk Management" and see what you can't figure out.
Anonymous
If Windows thinks the drive must be formatted, it means that it found the drive's partition(s), but they were not formatted. Yes, this means the drive is formatted in a way that Windows can't recognize. There are a number of reasons for this including improperly handling the drive, a virus, accidentally formatting it and many others.
So, what do you do? Well, I would try to use the Partition Support utilities to see if it can find the data on the drive. This program addresses the drive not by letter but by number. Since Windows says the drive needs to be formatted, it has recognized the drive. That means it's still readable and the data is probably still there. DO NOT write to the drive or reformat it until you try the (free) software at http://www.partitionsupport.com/.
Scott P
If you like to get the files back, format the hard drive will wipe out everything you have. Did you try to get your new PC to read the old hard drive in FAT system?
Anonymous
If that drive has windows on it also. Then unhook your other hard drive and just hook the new one up by itself. When it boots up take off the files you need and put on a disk. But if you want to use both hard drives together you will need to format the new one and then partition to ntfs
Steve P
Any level of format will erase the files. There may not be much you can do at this point.