SATA external HDD? **Resolved thanks very much**

andy.m_2

I have, over the years, had some laptops etc from work that have been upgraded, replaced etc.
In each instance I asked for the hard drive so that I had all my documents/files.

I have got a SATA enclosure and wondered if it was possible to simply format the drives and use them as external storage/backup?

I keep a master seagate 3.5" for backups so these would be handy for data storage/movement on a small scale.

thank you for your time.

System

yup, it's possible

andy.m_2

thank you.

I have formatted each drive in turn and it seems a-ok thus far.
On one drive though, when USB connected, it comes up with drive (E) and drive (F) on my computer which I found a little confusing.

Q1. Is it possible to merge the two sections into a single drive?

Q2. Despite the drive being 100Gb it is saying only 84Gb is useable, why would this be please?

Q3. Am I being thick? This seems an excellent method of storage that has in essence cost me less than a tenner, is the catch or a down side that I'm going to meet soon?

thank you again for your time/help

-TangleFoot-

andy.m wrote: »

Q1. Is it possible to merge the two sections into a single drive?

Q2. Despite the drive being 100Gb it is saying only 84Gb is useable, why would this be please?

1. Yes. It is also possible to delete both partitions and create a new one.
2. GB ≠ GiB

Toxteth_OGrady

http://easeus-partition-master-home-edition.en.softonic.com/

-TangleFoot-

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

softonic.com

Hmph!

chunter

diskmgmt.msc
it's an external drive.

but backup your information first!

andy.m_2

chunter wrote: »

diskmgmt.msc
it's an external drive.

but backup your information first!

it is a blank, formatted drive so there is no information on it that I know of.
edit: have googled better and got results, many thanks to all who have helped me

andy.m_2

Well I had a look about last night and had a play with the disc management tool.
I also downloaded cleanup utilities and ran the clean up disc doctor wassit. (I'm getting well Techie now me )

The clean up was excellent, ran the full utility and it found a fair few minor items which were easily cleared up, anyway, back to the SATA issue...

I ran the DiskMgmt and it showed the different partitioned areas, not the biggest drive I'll grant you but all the same handy enough at 320gig.
The drive was partitioned into 2 sections, 1) 100gb and 2) 220 gb
I deleted the 100gb section as per the handy guide/walk through instructions and then it simply disappeared!
I have lost 100gb from my drive.

I then tried a second drive, 2 sections again 75gb each, I deleted the first section and it became unassigned (this is good, it was as per the details) but then it wouldn't let me add it to the second section to make a single, larger drive. Object not supported, or something like that...

I'll keep going and I'm definitely getting there so thank you all for your help.

andy.m_2

update:
Using the disk clean up utility I was able to reduce the sector to 1mb so I'm honestly not bothered if I have lost that space, I assume that it is an arbitrary value and that in reality it is nothing.


Thanks again everyone, I'm off to play with formatting to make my blu-ray player speak to it then all my lads films can be be stored on the one device so he won't be scratching the discs to !!!!!!y.

andy.m_2

Final update as I'm happy....

I need to format the drive to FAT32 for the BR player to read it, windows won't format anything over 32gig to FAT32, preferring instead to lumber me with exFAT.

Mooching about the interweb I found FAT32Format and it works like a charm.

thanks all, I now have a happy lad with all his junk on a single SATA drive and have all my old flash drives back from him and no more scratched discs.
woop woop and all that