You have a problem if you receive a message, You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it on your Windows 11/10 PC, while using the external hard drive, USB, Memory or SD Card, as you may have important data on that disk – but Windows 10/8/7 will not let you use the disk and access the data, till you format it.
In the dialog box, you will see two options. Format disk and Cancel. If the data is not important and you can afford to do without it, selecting Format disk would be the easiest and best option. If not, then let us see what you can do.
You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it
The reason this happens is that the drive may be faulty. This could also happen if you remove the external drive without using the Safely Remove Hardware option. You may think that using recovery software can help you, but it will not, as the partition itself has become inaccessible, and your computer will not recognize the drive – unless you format it.
You could restart your computer and try using a different USB Port and see if it works. Else using a partition recovery software like TestDisk can help. These tools help recover lost partitions and make non-booting disks bootable again.
Keep a new blank GPT-formatted hard disk ready, and then use Testdisk to copy your data to the new disk. After you have done this, you may format the old drive using GPT instead of MBR and then copy your data back.
Once you have recovered your partition using partition recovery software, you might not even need data recovery software, as you might be able to boot and access your files. But if you do feel the need, here is a list of some free data recovery software to help you recover files.
If you have any other ideas on how to deal with this problem, please do share in the comments section below.
See this post if you receive The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
@TheWindowsClub has every answer When it comes to issues in your Windows Computer. Thanks, helpful.
:)
I wish I knew about this before! I had a file on my flash drive that was important (a game) and I lost it because I had to format it! Thank You for letting me know, I won’t make that mistake again!
Great Advice Anand. I have found some good utilities that will successfully recover partitions on mechanical hard drives, but I have never managed to successfully do this with a USB flash drive.
First try should be to reassign a drive letter. Often the drive will be accessible again.
Good idea.
Important document ~ a game ???? Hahaha..
That’s Helpful ,
Thanks :)
I see this message frequently on any computer and I’ve never hit format disk. This message is incorrect. What I do is remove the USB devise and plug it in again or into a different USB connector. This has always gotten rid of that message.
Try This:
1) Remove USB
2) Load a Linux OS
3) Plug the USB
4) Copy All your data from USB to HDD
5) Shut Down Linux
6) Turn on Windows
7) Format the USB
8) re-copy the data from HDD to USB
Not working on Linux too :(
Which version of Linux ?
hi ? if i retrieved my files from formatted disk .. the files will be back completely or not ? thanks for your concern :)
Hey guys, don’t run chkdsk if this is a result of hard drive damage, e.g. you dropped it. Chkdsk might further damage it. Try this, boot up into Ubuntu from a flash drive. Once logged in, plug in your hard drive & if you lucky you’d be able to access it. The error at times is as a result of windows not being able to read it in it’s format so you need to try a different OS