I ;have formatted the WD external drive and partitioned it int "F" and "G" drivers. I'm using drive "F" for back-up to the system "C" drive. I ned instructions on how to install the Windows XP operating system on the WD "G" drive.

Odd. Try this:
Connect the drive, don't bother formatting. Right click on My Computer (or just Computer from the Start Menu) and select manage. Click on Storage, Disk Management.
Look for the WD drive Right click on any existing partitions/volumes on that drive and delete them. Right click again and select Create partition (something like that, I don't have a drive to play with in front of me). Accept all the defaults but don't select quick format. Let it do a full format!
If, after all that, you still get that error, it might be the drive failing and you'll want to contact WD for a replacement if it's under warranty. If not, you can get another 250+G drive and swap it out yourself. :)

The best software that can fix this problem is "Power Quest Partition Magic".It works like a dream for drives of any capacity!

Hi,
Right click on your My Computer icon and select Manage,
Now click on Disk Management.
Here you can see your Hard Disc partition.

Write click on any drive and format it. It will remove your write protection.

But Make sure it will delete all data on that partition.

Try putting the unit back on your laptop and using the windows disk management utility. The directions are below. Windows Vista is a bit differenct than either windows 7 or XP.

Right click on you "Computer" Icon in your start menu

A menu will open

Chose "Manage"

The Computer Management window will open

The Computer Management window is broken down into 3 sections.

The first section on the left side of the window shows a menu. Disk Management is on the lower portion of the menu.

The right side is separated into two sections, top and bottom. The top portion shows a list of active drives on the computer. The lower portion shows all drives connected to the computer. CD or DVD drives that have not disk will not show as active drives on the top section, but can be seen in the lower section.

The lower section will show the drive description, drive size and drive condition (online or off line) in small box on the left side of that section. Disk drives will designate a "Drive" and a number. Drive 0 is usually your internal hard drive. Then it would list drive 1, drive 2, etc, depending on how many internal and external drive sources you have connected to your computer. Then it will list your CD drives and generally show their drive letter assignments.

Next to the smaller section described above, is a larger section which shows the driver letter, size of the driver and condition (if working correctly will show "healthy")

This is the area you can right click and get a menu that will allow you to open, explore, mark the partition as active, change the driver letter, format the drive or delete a partition. (A note of caution here. Changing the driver letter on your main hard drive partition will cause windows to stop functioning. The main hard drive, or hard drive partition, is normally given the letter "C".) A hard drive may show two or more partitions with separate drive letters designated for each partition.

A drive that is having a problem may show that it needs to be formatted (status as Unformatted). This can be done from this window. An external drive, whether it is a hard drive or CD/DVD drive, can have the letter designator change done if you want to organize your external drives. There are times when a drive will not show up because the drive letter that they are programmed to use are taken. Most USB drives are programmed to us the letters "F" or "G". In this area, you can assign the USB drive any drive letter that is not being used and this will make it visible in windows.

See if this helps you manage the external disk and get it formatted so you can use it on your laptop.

If you found this answer helpful, please remember to leave positive feedback.

Thank You,

Brian

Sounds like a virus has attacked try to run an antivirus if you cannot you will have to format to use drive files will be lost

if you did not format it, you can get a partition table editor to restore the partition. An example is Partition Table Doctor which worked for me.
http://www.ptdd.com/

Click Start
Right-mouse click on My Computer
Click Manage
Click Storage
Click Disk Management (local)
Click to select the WD drive
Right-mouse click to DELETE the partition.
Click to create a "small" (32GB???) partition.
Try to format that small partition.
If it completes, then at least the first 32GB of the 1000GB is OK.
Delete the partition, and create a four-times-as-large partition.
Try to format that 128GB partition.
If it completes, then at least the first 128GB of the 1000GB is OK.
Delete the partition, and create a four-times-as-large partition.
Try to format that 512GB partition.
If it completes, then at least the first half of the 1000GB is OK.

Otherwise, if it fails, then WD has a one-year warranty,
i.e., they will replace it for free.

Note that WD also has a "Customer Loyalty Program".
If you have an old, out-of-warranty, WD drive (internal or external),
then you can buy a new WD drive, at a discount, from their web-site.

Sounds like you need to create a new partition, and if you find that a partition already exists, delete it and create another.

what are the tips of hard disk drive troubleshooting

What OS are you running? What is it formatted as FAT32 or NTFS and how big are the partitions. Various operating systems, hardware and formatting schemes have different limitations. If you want to use the drive in Leopard formatted with NTFS which is the only way to create partitions larger than 20 or 30 GB you may need to install an NTFS file system driver like FUSE.
The other option is to format it as HFS and install Macdrive 7 in Windows to use Mac formatted drives in Windows.

Hope this helps.