In vista how to format seagate 320 gb external hard disk...

Go to the manufacture website, www.seagate.com Type: format hard drive.

Improve the Fixya experience for everyone by voting!

It sounds as though you have one of the following problems:

1. Dirty contacts that can be cleaned with CRC electronic component cleaner;
2. A faulty drive that may have been dropped at some point in time. Your drive may have a three-year warranty and Seagate will replace it. Just go online and provide the serial number; and.
3. You may have to reinstall the drivers. The Seagate website can provide this if needed.

Hello there,

1. Is your Seagate portable external drive new? 2. Pug your external hard drive.
If it is follow instructions below. Guide is based on a Window7 operating system, you wont be having trouble if you're using Windows XP or Vista there will be a slight difference.

Note: you must be logged as an admin
a. Click start menu, right click-on Computer b. Left click on Manage. c. On Computer Management window. d. Left pane, Click Storage, Disk Management. you will see all available volume. e. If your Seagate is a new drive, it will appear as Un-allocated volume. f. Format the drive using NTFS file system before you can use it. you can also partition your new hard drive and assign a drive letter to the partition before you can use it.

Hopefully this guide helped. If you have questions feel free to ask me.
Thank you for using FixYa.

It is possible the usb port is not giving enough power for the device, theres a cable the allows you to connect the device to 2 usb ports to get more juice, maybe that could help.

you have to FORMAT the hard drive you can only format a hard drive from another disk

Send your seagate back under warranty (RMA) they will send you a new one.

Check the partition size in Disk Management (if running Win7 - download a free Partition Manager if not) and see if the system is seeing the partition correctly. Seagate has recovery software available on their website but you may just have to repartition and reformat.

did u format the wd 320 gb already
you have to format it first to work from it

Here is a link to Seagate that describes how to fromat your drive fro a Mac. GOOD LUCK!