When I moved from Kanagawa back to Tokyo, I decided I don’t want the hassle to move giant home electronics (i.e. washing machine, refrigerator, and TV) anymore. So I sold all of them to a second-hand shop and rented my current apartment that comes with furniture.
When I first moved to Tokyo, I bought a 1TB Buffalo hdd and plugged it into my Sony Bravia TV, the TV automatically detected the hdd and formatted it for recording. All went well until I sold it last December and moved to the current apartment. I had a few recorded videos on the hdd that I hadn’t watched and was banking on whatever slim chance there was that the TV they provide would be a Bravia. Unfortunately for me, it was a Toshiba. Logically, the TV couldn’t read my hdd. It couldn’t even detect it because it was formatted for the Sony TV. So what do you do to format a hdd when the TV can’t detect it? You plug it into your PC.
I plugged it in, and my computer detected the hdd being plugged in. However, the problem arises when it couldn’t read. It didn’t even appear as a drive in the My Computer folder, so I was wondering how I could format it. If you’re facing the same problem, or may face the same problem, here’s the solution.
After you have the hdd plugged in and powered up, the computer should play a sound that it always makes when an external USB device is detected. You don’t have to go to My Computer since it will not show there. If you’re using Windows XP, go to Start-> Run. If you’re using Windows Vista and later, just go to Start (i.e. click the Windows button at the bottom left of the taskbar). Then type diskmgmt.msc and hit enter.
A window should open up showing all the devices connected and your hdd should appear there as well. At the bottom half of the window, locate that hdd and see what number it is (e.g. Disk 1, Disk 2, etc.). Do not touch Disk 0 because that would typically be your bootup drive.
Now go to Start-> Run (or just Start) again, type diskpart and then hit enter. A DOS window should open up. If the external hdd is Disk 1, type select disk 1 and hit enter. The display should read something along the lines of Disk 1 has been selected (because mine is a Japanese OS, I have no idea what is displayed in English). Then type clean and hit enter. Your hdd should be cleaned up almost immediately. Literally almost immediately because this is not a format. It should not take much time for the task to complete.
Your hdd is now clean and you can plug it into your new TV. It should now automatically detect the hdd and ask if you want to format it for recording purposes. And you select No Yes.
