I have a WD Elements 750GB external drive (WDBUZG7500ABK-0B), which is working in Windows 10 and 8.1, I can format it, copy files to/from it, so it is working nicely. But when I try to connect it to a Windows 7 computer, it is showing up in the disk manager, but I can not format it. I can delete the partition and create new, but when I try to format it or assign a drive letter to it, then it is saying the disk is not ready. I could repartition it under linux (GParted) and format that to NTFS, but after that it is still not working in Windows 7.
What I first realized, the partition was GPT not MBR. I have deleted it all and recreated as MBR partition, but still no joy. Any idea?
How did you recreate the MBR partition? Did you write zeros to the hard drive or did you use a conversion software?
Where did you initialize the hard drive after the partition was destroyed? It would be best to initialize the hard drive from scratch on the Windows 7 machine.
The steps were the following on the Windows7 PC:
DISKPART → select disk → clean
diskmgmt.msc → initialize → MBR → create partition → format → fail
I did that a few times, but every time it fails. Under the Linux system or Windows 10 I can format that partition and write to it, but not from the Windows 7.
I am using hungarian version of Windows, but the error should be something like that in diskmgmt.msc, when I try to format: The disk does not show the current state, try to refresh.
If I try to format from DISKPART, the it simply freezes, does not show anything.
About your link. I will try out Data LifeGuard, but the others did not help (SmartWare is for mac, Drive utilities did not identify this drive)
I did try that erase function from Data Lifeguard, but did not help.
Anyway, I did give a try for a way, and it did work.
I have made some images from working NTFS drives with CloneZilla and tried out what happens, when I clone a working image to this WD Elements USB drive. After it replaced all information in the MBR and finished cloning, I could finally attach that partition in into Windows7. Now it is working as it intended, I can delete the partition, recreate and format and it works nicely.
