Fix Format Error: Disk in Drive Is not Formatted Want to Format now?

If you accidentally encountered this kind of formatting error "The disk in drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now?" Do not format it right away! More similar situations can be seen here and there, I was wandering on several Internet communities.


“When I connected Canon digital camera SD memory card to the computer via a card reader, Windows detected the memory card and showed as Removable Drive under My Computer. But when I try to access the drive, it said ‘the drive is not formatted, would you like to format it now?’ I have plenty of precious photos and video chips insides the card. How could I get them out before formatting the card?” – by Daniel 

“I have a D drive and every time i try to access a folder in that drive it keeps saying ‘Drive not formatted, do you want to format it now?’ But another partition under that drive works fine. I don't want to format it because I need the files. The drive also acts really slowly on any of the other files I click on. How to fix the problem and make my folder become alive?” – by Rose 

“My Western Digital external hard drive recently didn’t let me view the data insides. Windows sometimes won’t recognize it well thus each time I try to open it says disk in drive not formatted error. I followed it but very wired it won’t let it format. Any way to fix the error?” - by Jack

It seems this kind of problems happen more often on removable devices such as a pen drive, SD memory card, external hard drive, etc. It says you have to format the disk and but it won't let you format it. Instead, it shows you some weird errors. 

What are possible "culprits"?

• The device is too old and may be corrupted after it shows its age. As you know like any other old technology, an external storage device has its own lifespan. And you never know when it's going to retire.
• There are bad sectors in the specific area of the disk that is required for a file system, e.g. for a boot sector or the FAT table sector. Since the drive obviously can be fully accessed, Windows refuses to format it.  
• Sometimes, you cannot format the drive to the FAT file system if it has been formatted to another file system which is not recognized by Windows.
• Some incompatibilities in the drivers or BIOS result in such an error. It makes sense to try to format the drive on another computer. In most cases, the incompatibility problem only concerns the format procedure. Once the drive is formatted, it would work fine.

Solution to fix the format error

Step 1. Try the problematic hard drive or external removable media on another computer. See if the device can be accessed normally. This way helps clear the buffers and eliminates incompatibility issues. Sometimes the error disappears and you disk drive works normally again.

Step 2. If step 1 doesn't help. Try recovering the data with some free data recovery programs first. If you are under Windows, you can use PhotoRec, RECUVA, or Pandora Recovery. For Apple Mac OS, turn to the posting free Mac file rescue software I wrote earlier.

Step 3. After your files are recovered, follow those steps to try formatting the drive (if you are using a memory card or flash drive, connect it to your PC first). Go to My computer -> Properties -> Manage -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management -> select the problematic drive and then format it here. If this won't help, use this third-party HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool to format. It should work.

Step 4. It’s not over. If step 2 doesn't recover all of your lost files. Now you should try to re-use the data recovery software recommended to re-scan the disk to see if you can rescue more data. Note: a quick format won't erase the data permanently, learn more from this article for why.



That's all what I want to share. Do you find the solution? Will the message "The drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now" still appears? Or any new problems? Let me know, leave a comment below.