How do i format gpt protective partition

Option 2. Then the problem gets resolved. Roxanne is one of the main contributors to EaseUS and has created multiple posts on digital devices like PCs, Mobile phones, tablets, Mac, etc.

She loves to share ideas with people of the same interest. Brithny is a technology enthusiast, aiming to make readers' tech life easy and enjoyable. She loves exploring new technologies and writing technical how-to tips. On her spare time, she loves sharing things about her favorite singer - Taylor Swift on her Facebook or Twitter. It makes it way easier to play out what will happen after you've made all the changes. I also think the overall look and feel of EaseUS Partition Master Free makes whatever you're doing with your computer's partitions easy.

Partition Master Free can Resize, Move, Merge, Migrate, and Copy disks or partitions; convert to local, change label, defragment, check and explore partition; and much more. A premium upgrade adds free tech support and the ability to resize dynamic volumes.

It won't hot image your drives or align them, but since it's coupled with a partition manager, it allows you do perform many tasks at once, instead of just cloning drives. You can move partitions around, resize them, defragment, and more, along with the other tools you'd expect from a cloning tool. Let it manage your storage drive: resize, format, delete, clone, convert, etc. This is because the internal or external hard disk was previously prepared on either a Windows or Macintosh computer with a GPT partition.

Normal Disk Management facilities will not overcome this issue. To prepare this drive, you will need to use the Windows diskpart command-line utility. This is a data destructive process. This procedure not only removes the drive's partition, but also removes the Drive Signature.

You must open Disk Management and document the Disk Number of the drive containing the GPT Protective partition, as you will need this information later in the procedure. Seagate references third parties and third party products as an informational service only, it is not an endorsement or recommendation - implied or otherwise - of any of the listed companies. Seagate makes no warranty - implied or otherwise - regarding the performance or reliability of these companies or products.

Each company listed is independent from Seagate and is not under the control of Seagate; therefore, Seagate accepts no responsibility for and disclaims any liability from the actions or products of the listed companies.

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Any ideas? Are you sure you have data on the disk? The information I needed. Thank you for this post. Like so many on here I got poor info time after time on the net and then stumbled on this!

Man thanks and then some!!!!!!!! Good Day from NC! I did this. I have a question: when i do the list disk command only my primary disk is shown. I have 4 disks connected to my PC and none of them show up. Thank you so much! So simple and clear. We need more people like you online!! This post has been actively commented for over 2 years! You rock dude! Thanks for the post.

You saved me the aggravation. Should be 1 on Google! Unfortunately diskpart does not show removable memory USB memory stick as a drive so will not allow you to clear GPT on these devices. This was the solution in my particular case. Fred : Unfortunately diskpart does not show removable memory USB memory stick as a drive so will not allow you to clear GPT on these devices.

Please let us know about it. Thanks from Japan! It worked. Best regards!! You were a big help thnx. This worked like a charm! My XP pro will not detect it, nor will it be accessible in the disk list in diskpart. Any advice on that? You are a bloody genius,I spent weeks trying to figure this out. Very useful, but i have never used the command line before so I am a little weary of using the script here.

Do i just type in select disk x then clear disk x? Will that clear whats on the actual computer or just on the ext hdd? Because the latter is all I want! Please reply asap, I need to get this done by tomorrow and noone else on the internet seems to be as idiotic or as cautious as me! It will only clear that HDD. This helped me a lot.

It was not obvious to use the clean command. I tried to delete the GPT but it did not work. But after reading your article it was very simple to fix it. WOW, look at all the well deserved comments. Well, like so many others, I found a lot of bad information, mostly people guessing at ways to do it, but DiskPart took all of about 30 seconds.

LOL A true admin tool if ever there was one. Thank you!!! Also great to see so many thank yous starting in Jan and one just posted hours before mine. This is what the web is about and the amount of value you can provide to so many. Bought an enclosure…and Vista recognizes the drive as a storage device.. In Admin Tools.. Is it possible that XP will recognize the drive.. It was a bootable drive in the original computer…and the jumper has been changed to make it a slave.

Anyone that can help with this? Please email to fleabear yahoo. A friend was also looking to get his data off his old computer that recently had the motherboard go down. As luck would have it.. When I type in Diskpart, it only shows the primary drive. I thought am supposed to see both drives. All I see is the primary drive. This thing is really bothering me. Its a GB WD drive.

I want to run installations for some lessons. I believe deleting the GPT Protective partition is about choice. I have both a mac and a pc and i did format my gb lg external hard drive into 3 partions-mac os x journalled , fat 32, and NTSF. All partitions were done on the mac but the NTSF origally a fat 32 vol from the mac was reformatted on my pc to ntsf. So everything works fine since my pc runs windows 7 not xp.

The GPT partition that shows up on my pc is just mb, so no worries; the idea is to be able to use my ext hard disk on both the mac and pc? I was lucky as I had bought a HDD that I found was GPT protected, so I googled for a solution and found this spot straight away — it was almost at the top of the google search, which perhaps reflects the poularity of the site? A fix, freely given, that took under a minute to complete — and otherwise I could have spent hours searching.

I have never come across this type of partition before, but thanks to this post my hard drive was quickly fixed and in use. Awesome, worked flawlessly. I was strugling with diskpart and disk management but you steps gave me exact instructions. What the hell? Are you serious? How did you ever find out about it? Btw I got the disk from eBay. I have no idea why so many disks are GPTed at all. Will this erase everything on all disks i.

Or did I just read it wrong? I have been hammering a way this thing for two days. I have tried every OS install that there is in order to get this thing formatted and partitioned.

Even pulled out some old Dos disks from the 90s trying to Fdisk it. I was in the middle of using Lifeguard Diagnostic from Western Digital it was about half way threw adding zeros already 3 hours in when I came across this post.

Damm your sweet , fixed in minutes. Your the Man. Nothing… Absolutely no information on how to recover and remove that damn partition. Google search and bam! Your awesome advice. I also have never used DiskPart and have been playing with computers for the past 20 years. I too have been looking for a way to remove the protected partition on a Western Digital Passort. You completely simplified this process and saved me hours of further searching. I really appreciate this. Hi Paul.

I have bought an external hard drive with GPT Protection. When I type list disk as suggested I get a list containing my internal hard disk c drive and the new disk. I attempt to perform DiskPart on a USB Flash drive, however, when i type the command it show me the fixed disk only and it does not show the removable disk… my question to you, is there a way to delete the GPT Protective partition from a removable drive USB Flash drive.

I have a very delicate problem. I installed my disk on win XP, backuped all our photos wedding and baby … on it. Please, is there any way to recover the data? Try to plug the disk into Windows Vista or Windows 7 to see if you can retrieve the data…………. Adding to the many many thanks already! Worked within seconds. Thanks for saving me alot of wasted time. I have the same problem as Kristoffer! I have tried to plug in today my external Seagate hard drive on to an mac laptop and it showed empty!!

Is there any chance to recover my data? I have only important data there, I would be devastated to loose it all. Do you think that plug it in to a pc with vista could let me see and retrieve my data? Now you will have non-gpt driver which can be used in both XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Bloody fantastic — thanks so much for posting that — solved my problem after 48hrs of going bananas! I used this on an external USB disk drive. It reported closing down to avoid damage to Windows. This was a bit worrying at the time but when I restarted Vista virtual machine all was well. Success, but others might like to know about the blue screen issue. I follow the steps and work. Thanks for the help and information. Segui os passos conforme descritos e funcionou em 30 segundos.

Plz explain to me via email in lamens terms how to copy my files prior to formatting my external hard drive. Thank you so much for your assistance. I was using the disk as a Time Machine for my mac, but needed it to be a external hard drive for my PC.

This was the only way. Thanks for mentioning at the beginning of the of the post that this will wipe your drive and the main problem is actually that the drive is from a Bit machine and just will not work in a Bit Machine…. Thanks from me too! This cleared the problem, but I have to agree with one of the comments that the DiskPart is really scary!

Any ideea? Number to state that this one article just saved me two USB drives that got screwed up somehow. Getting my head around the GPT Mb was ……. Another success. Great instructions. I echo what everyone else says and add my comment in the hope that it will help your page get to the top of the search listings for the solution to this particular problem. It definitely works getting rid of the GPT but still no answers on how to make the disk show back up under disk management.

Amazing, just amazing. I replaced my laptop hard drive with an SSD. I tried formating it to fat32 using swissknife, easus, partition magic etc everything I tried would not show up on either of the systems. Purchased a drive on ebay that had a mb GPT partition. Like all the others, I tried the usual partition solutions with no success.

Fortunately I found your page. I am going to post ur link in all the links where i read. This is normal, those space are reserved for disk partition and file information for the rest of space. Picked up a new Toshiba GB external drive for cheap quite a while back and just found out it was for mac.

Too late to return. Could not use on my xp nor w7 machines. Your advice cleaned gpt off the drive and allowed me to give it a drive letter and format it for use on my pc computers. Thanks for the advice and your help.

I am moving files to it as I type. You have been bookmarked. Great job, thanks again! Like everyone else…did everything to no avail until i saw this fix. Worked from Windows 7. I cannot even start to thank you. I was quite lost before this information came toward me. Again, thank you so, so much! Great posting, diskpart who would of thought it would be that easy!

You learn and learn, but can never learn it all. Many thanks! I see that you posted your solution 3 years ago and it looks it helped many people beside me. Your posting is useful and helpful. Many of us will definitely assert that everything in your site is nice. Should you keep on posting helpful articles on your online site, often there is a higher possibility that lots of viewers will visit your web page.

Land For Sale. Great advice. It needs a couple extra steps, but you gave the most important procedure to clean my new Hitachi external drive.

I reformatted it using Windows 7. I just followed your suggestion above and it worked! Reading through this post reminds me of my previous room mate! He always kept chatting about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thank you for sharing! This helped me get access to a disk that was previously formatted for Mac.

Thank you very much!!! Amazing, i just follow the instructions n finally i did it. Thank you very much for saving my sanity!!! This should be published in every manual….

Too much bs advice on the net…this is not! Very much appreciated. Now I just need to figure out how to format the disk in standard FAT32…. You have literally years worth of thanks on this page. Go figure I would forget such a important command now 25 years later.

Thanks you so much. This had me stumped too. Thank you SO much!!! Been searching the internet for hours!! Thank you so much!!!! I did exactly like you told here and ererything is okay now.

I could reset my Sata HD. Stumbled here after a google search and wanted to thank you immensely for the great and easy tutorial. Great job! Thanks again. Thanks alot. I thought to buy new one. It saves me bucks. My Harddisk is working again.. This may be an old thread but it solved my problem. New drive is now formatting and seen in Explorer.

Ive been dealing with this GPT protective crap for many hours even the guy at Seagate was completely useless. Here in the below, we collected three methods and you can pick up anyone for help. The earlier the method is presented, the easier it will be. The reason why we first recommend you to try a third-party partition manager software is that it can simplify the operating process for you. Follow the guide to work the problem out:. The other efficient way to help you quickly convert a disk to MBR is to apply Disk Management for help.

It's a Windows built-in method that makes your disk conversion process free:. Here, right-click the unallocated hard drive and click "Initialize Disk". Step 3. Be careful while you are following the disk conversion steps as listed below:. Open Command Prompt on your computer, and type diskpart in the cmd and hit Enter. When you finish all the operations listed in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, congratulations.

You have completely get rid of the GPT protective partition on your disk. And the whole disk is available for you to create new partitions now. Note that when you finish the whole process with provided solutions on this page, you have thoroughly removed the GPT protective partition from your disk. But now, the disk is an unallocated drive. To make use of the disk, you will need to re-partition it, creating new partitions on it. We will list two workable tools with tutorial steps to guide creating volumes on Windows PC.

Pick up either one to make your disk available to save data again:. On the main window, right-click on the unallocated space on your hard drive or external storage device and select "Create".