Reusing NAS hard drives with an HD enclosure

[Paperguy]

I recently updated the hard drives on my synology DS218+. I use Western Digital NAS red hard drives. I updated from 4TB to 8TB. The upgrade went fine. I now have two extra 4TB hard drives. I put them into an external hard drive enclosure, however my windows machine cannot recognize the drives. The enclosure can recognize other drives but not the ones that came out of the Synology. The drives still have data on them. I would like to wipe them clean and use them as regular external hard drives.

Do I need to do something to the hard drives in order to use them as regular external hard drives?

 

[Rusty]

I recently updated the hard drives on my synology DS218+. I use Western Digital NAS red hard drives. I updated from 4TB to 8TB. The upgrade went fine. I now have two extra 4TB hard drives. I put them into an external hard drive enclosure, however my windows machine cannot recognize the drives. The enclosure can recognize other drives but not the ones that came out of the Synology. The drives still have data on them. I would like to wipe them clean and use them as regular external hard drives.

Do I need to do something to the hard drives in order to use them as regular external hard drives?

You need to wipe the file format on them that Windows does not recognize. If you want use a Linux machine to delete the partitions and clear up, or open up Windows Computer management (storage section), and see if you can simply delete the detected (unknown) volume.

 

[Telos]

I put them into an external hard drive enclosure, however my windows machine cannot recognize the drives.

Connect them to your Windows PC and use 'diskpart clean' (google that for details) to remove the Linux partitioning (which will "destroy" the files present). You can then format them as you desire.

 

[Paperguy]

Thanks Rusty and Telos. I think I'll give Telos' suggestion first. I don't know where I would find a Linux machine.

 

[Telos]

I'll give Telos' suggestion first

Seagate has a good write-up on Diskpart clean.

Since you're reusing your own drives you should not require 'Diskpart clean all' which takes significantly longer (it zeroes every sector).

 

[Jan Janowski]

Have done such things from many locations to many others… Quite successfully! ( OS be damned!)

Do a surface test with factory software first…. And if it Passes: don’t let anything prevent you from getting your $$$$’s worth!!!

The crazy-est I recall: took 16 drives from a GVG TV Video Server that was being retired….. And placed in a Discrete Logic raid array for video editing, to upgrade it 4x times! (after loading new DL firmware on them! They were still in use when I retired), less Two that died and were replaced with spares I had on shelf! (God knows what happened after 6-30-2015!!)

 

[Paperguy]

Have done such things from many locations to others… Quite successfully!

Do a surface test with factory software first…. And if it Passes: don’t let anything prevent you from getting your $$$$’s worth!!!

Hi Jan, sorry, can you explain? I don't understand your second sentence. What's a surface test?

 

[Jan Janowski]

Software from drive MFG written to test condition of platters….

If it passes the test: TRUST DRIVE!
If it fails the test: PITCH THE DRIVE

That is the easiest Pass/Fail test I know of!

 

[ed.j]

I think you should be able to do this in a more simple way.
Click start
Type and then click on "create and format hard disk partitions"
Work out which entry corresponds to the disk you are trying to use. refer to "my computer" etc to make sure you are confident
Right click on the partition (ie greyed out horizontal rectangle) that you want to use and click "format" or something like that - i can't remember exactly
Follow the steps. You'll probably want to format as NTFS

MAKE SURE YOU ARE TEN MILLION PERCENT SURE YOU ARE FORMATTING THE CORRECT DISK/PARTITION AS IT WILL DELETE ALL DATA ON THAT DEVICE/PARTITION

once you've done that and the format is complete
click start
type cmd
right click command prompt-> run as administrator
if a warning box pops up, click yes/allow etc
type in:

chkdsk X: /f

(where X is the drive letter that you selected in the formatting steps.)
press enter
this scans the disk for errors and attempts to fix them
hopefully no errors and you are good to use the drive.

 

[Paperguy]

Thanks for the advice. I was able to clean the desk and I can see it under Disk Management. However, I still cannot see the disk in windows explorer. When I right click on the Disk, I have a few options to "New Spanned Volume" or "New Striped Volume". I also have the options to Convert to Dynamic Disk or Convert to MBR Disk. I just want to use this as an external drive. Any suggestions on how to get this to show up as a regular external drive?

 

[Paperguy]

Ok. I figured it out. There was another option to create a New Simple Volume and I choose that option and everything worked out. Thanks for everyones help.

 

[ed.j]

Convert to Dynamic Disk, and if it gives you the option during the process choose GPT not MBR. One it's done you can create a new partition/simple volume on the drive, which you will probably want to make the maximum size the disk can take.

- Just seen your post, glad you got it done.