Storage Solutions New [EXTERNAL] WD 5tb drive came without formatting

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deepakvrao

Adept
I use a lot of hard drives to store my surgical videos. For the first time I opened a new WD 5Tb drive and saw that it came as 'RAW' without the usual NTFS formatting. Anything to worry? Maybe refurb? Anyone else opened a brand new drive which came in not formatted? Need these drives to be reliable.

All my earlier drives came with NTFS, and I would format to Mac if using with a mac, or use it directly with a PC.
 
enthusiast29 said:
Usually all new drives come unformatted/uninitialized. The user has to initialize the drive and create a partition on their end.
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Have maybe 10 external drives, and they all came with NTFS. Only needed formatting if I was using with a Mac.

Edit: Am talking about external USB drives.
 
Okay, external drives do usually come pre-formatted. That's weird that you got a RAW partition on it. Honestly, just be sure it was a sealed product and check if it's in warranty (online) and if it works fine just forget it.
 
Yes most times the exact file system that the drive is formatted in is usually mentioned on the packaging.

For WD portable just format it and check the warranty info against the serial no. The usb->sata controller is soldered/inbuilt so the chances of it being another drive in the enclosure are rare.
 
pull up the SMART stats and check how many hours it's been used for. Should be 0 for brand new drives. Also, do consider doing a full format before you use it for the first time. That should detect issues before you store any valuable data on it.
 
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