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Can't Format True Image Backup Drive

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Hello,

I wanted to repurpose a 4TB seagate drive I was using as a True Image backup disk.  I assumed a fresh reformat would work but it seems like my old encrypted backup files have locked the disk.  I get 'windows can't reformat' and 'drive is read only' errors.  

I was able to remove the disk under Disk Management and read a new partition but it only shows the 1.6TB that wasn't used in the backup as free.  So now my 4TB drive is a formatted 1.6TB drive and after several hours and several different disk tools I can't figure out how to get those missing sectors back.

Does anyone know how to scrape old encrypted backups off a disk?

thanks!

John 

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Try this:  open command prompt using "run as administrator"

Diskpart

list disk

(select the disk - make sure you get the right one)

Select Disk X (replace X with the correct disk number)

Clean

Does Clean report success?  If it does, go into computer management >>>> disk management, find your disk and initialize it and format it as NTFS and hopefully you're up and running.

If it doesn't work this way, you can use something like minitool partitionwizard free and format the disk with it outside of windows.  If you install it, and it needs to, it will boot to it's own recovery environment so you can do this.  Alternatively, they have an .iso download you can boot to or convert to a USB bootable media using something like RUFUS.  I use all of these tools and they are all very handy to have in your IT utility belt. 

John,

You can boot from rescue media or (F11 if you have that activated) and then try Add New Disk.  The linux version doesn't recognize windows permissions.

Let us know if this works.

FtrPilot

If you wish to remove all data, partition and formatting information from the drive use Diskpart as Bobbo suggests and run command clean all.  This will zero out the drive and return it to a RAW state so that you can format and partition the drive as you like.