PC won't detect external hard drive

[genetic]

I have an exFAT formatted 8TB Seagate BarraCuda hard drive (ST8000DM004). It's sitting in an external G-Drive USB 3.0 enclosure.

It stopped being detected in Windows 11, and didn't even show up in the 'Storage' tab in 'Computer Management' settings in the control panel. It won't read on my MacBook Pro either. I tried plugging it into the motherboard SATA prt directly, and tried installing it into another external enclosure. It's still not being detected.

I created a bootable USB with a copy of MX Linux on, and it managed to read the drive. I copied the data off the drive, and formatted it to exFAT in Linux again, but it still won't pick up in Windows, Mac or now even Linux anymore.

Strange thing is my LG Smart TV picks the drive up, and formatted it to FAT32, but it still won't be picked up on my PC or Mac. If I plug the drive into an Android smartphone, it picks up perfectly - can even copy to it, but I can't partition and format on Android.

Any ideas on how to delete the partition and format this drive so that it will pick up in Windows again?

 

[The Voice]

You shouldn't use FAT32 - the drive is too big. Maybe try exFAT again.

 

[ponder]

Any ideas on how to delete the partition and format this drive so that it will pick up in Windows again?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

From Linux where the X in sdX is the drive letter. You might have to use sudo or be root user.

That will write zeroes to the entire drive, might take long.

 

[genetic]

From Linux where the X in sdX is the drive number. You might have to use sudo or be root user.

That will write zeroes to the entire drive, might take long.

Thanks Ponder, will give that a try.

 

[ponder]

Thanks Ponder, will give that a try.

Correction, X is the drive letter and not number.

 

[agentrfr]

From Linux where the X in sdX is the drive letter. You might have to use sudo or be root user.

That will write zeroes to the entire drive, might take long.

i dunno, lets not give him the power to wipe the partition table of a hard drive without telling him how to list the /dev/sd label first xD

@genetic
If you are in windows, a more straightforward tool is to use Diskpart.

Run a cmd window:

diskpart

It will give you an admin UAC prompt, you need to select yes

list disk

will list all the attached disks - find the number of the external drive

select disk X

where X is the disk numer of the external disk

clean

clears and rewrites partion table

convert gpt

makes partition table gpt compliant

create part primary

creates a primary partition the full size of the disk

format fs=ntfs quick

formats the partition as ntfs (is readable by most modern smart devices, though macs can read but not write to the drive so keep that in mind - otherwise format as fs=exfat quick)

assign

gives it a drive letter to use in windows