Formatting My Book Essential 3TB Problem

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Aloha,

          I formatted my 3TB book by using the instructions that was on the external drive and  I must have did something wrong because I ended up with 2TB and my Windows 7 backup cannot use the  external drive. It shows a red X so what is the problem? There wasn’t a 3TB option so I was forced to do the 2TB and now I have lost 1TB and my Windows backup cannot access the external drive.

Mahalo,

doogdoog

2

you formatted the drive as MBR and that’s the reason the partition is only 2tb

Reformat the drive as GPT 

you can use the WD Quick Formatter to get back to default

if you want to download the software that comes with the drive use this LINK 

1 Like
3

Aloha Wizer,

                    Thanks for the tip and it worked so I am back to 3TB again.  I plugged my book into my other computer and it doesn’t  locate the drive (OS is Win XP) so I tried the adding new hardware and it did not locate it either. Any thought to this?

Mahalo,

doogdoog

4

32 bit XP doesn’t recognize drives larger than 2T. Look in the downloads for your drive there should be a WD quick format tool listed there. Use that it will have an option for using on XP

Joe

5

Aloha Joe_S,

                     I already formatted the drive using Win 7 as the OS on my other computer, so are you saying to format it again on my other computer that is using Win XP? I want to use My Book for both computers if that is possible.

Mahalo,

doogdoog

6

Aloha Joe_S,

                      I read the instructions on the WD Quick Format and I selected the factory default so I can see what you are saying. So if I reformat the drive again and choose XP compatible then will I be able to use it on both computers with Win 7 and Win XP?

Mahalo,

doogdoog

7

Yes then it should work on both. I’m not an expert and don’t know the details why it works.

Joe

8

Aloha Joe_S,

                       I reformatted My Book Essential and now it works on the computer with Win XP but now it is not recognized by my other computer using Win7. I guess it can only be one or the other, so now I think I have to get another drive for my other computer.

Mahalo,

doogdoog

9

You will probably continue to have problems getting a 3T drive to work on XP because it’s an old system. I thought the WD format would fix things for both.

Joe

10

Aloha Joe_S,

                      Thanks for the reply and I will try some other things to see if it makes a difference.

Mahalo,

doogdoog