How do you UNFORMAT an external drive?

I have a 500gb drive I used to save all my Xbox One data while it was getting repaired...

...it got repaired.

Now Id like to format it back so I can use it on my PC again...and I cant.

The drive doesnt show up on my PC at all and my only option while it is plugged into the One is to format it for use on the Xbox One...

...thats already been done...id like to unformat it. This seems crazy that this is hard to do as it doesnt tell you the format is permanent or really hard to undo.

Any help? I see all types of threads on Google related to this but no answers.

:)

 

External HDD - Unformat

Hi there, it's a bit of a tricky question because yes it's possible to retrieve data after a format as generally when a 'quick format' has been done it's just partition the data. I don't believe the Xbox would have done a quick format though and I have a
feeling it would have erased all data/software in order to put it's own on there so it's compatible.

Though the only way to get data after a format is by using a program on the PC like file scavenger so you might need to look into it further, there's certainly nothing you can do through the Xbox console to get the data back.

 

External HDD - Unformat

To anyone that can help or give me any information would be greatly appreciated....

I lent my HDD to my nephew who has a Xbox 360 to play movies off it....for whatever reason it wasn't being able to read it and a popup question that read "Configure it" which my nephew thought it would need to be configured to play the movies.....of course
what resulted was my HDD being formatted for Xbox 360.

My HDD contained a lot of other infomation other than movies so I am desperate to get it back...is there a way to undo this and restore all my old data?

Again hopefully somebody may have some detail information. If you don't know then please dont post any comments like try this....I would rather only take advice from people that actually know at least then I may have some chance before I take it into the computer
shop to see if they can recover anything.

Thanks

 

I haven't tried it myself, but the computer should still see the external hard drive as a device even if it can't mount the drive, check device manager?

 

Or perhaps look at the manufacturers website, some will provide software with tools for troubleshooting and formatting the drive.

 

I just checked the device manager like you said...and it does show up.

...but it doesnt show any option to reformat in the device manager. Im glad it shows up on my PC now as it doesnt show up under "My Computer" at all but it only gives options to uninstall and disable.

Neither of those sound like a reformat but the option has to be available somewhere.

Thanks for the help so far!

 

Search your computer for disk management, its a Windows utility for managing media drives, it should show up there.

 

Yeah...it was under disk management but it was still a pain.

I had to do a couple of things just to get it to show up and then once it did I just right clicked it and selected simple volume partition and under there it had an option to reformat to ntfs.

How annoying...but thanks for the help!