In those cases where a hard drive is simply not formatting, partitioning, etc., you may want to consider using a specialty hard drive formatting utility, which will often times make things simpler. If this is happening, this guide may be useful.
If you’re comfortable using command line, then you may want to check out our guide on how to format external hard drives to FAT32.Īdditionally, your computer may not recognize the external hard drive whatsoever. If you are unable to get a hard drive formatted or partitioned correctly using the built-in apps that are offered by Microsoft and Apple, then your next step may be to try and format the drive directly, using command line. For example, the drive that you are trying to select for formatting may not be recognized by the utility, or it may be greyed out and not clickable. However, there are times when it simply doesn’t work very well.
The Windows Disk Management function, pictured above, allows Windows users to simply format and partition external drives.
