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[beyondsoccermom]

I bought my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra Portable 1 TB to initially back up my Dish DVR because I knew I was going to get a new receiver.  I didn't want to lose all the shows we had recorded.

I successfully backed up and then later restored all the shows from the old DVR and the new DVR.

But, now I want to use my portable external hard drive to back up my PC. And, there's the problem.

When I use Windows 7 Disk Management, it only shows 12.58 GB (NTFS) for my D: drive on Disk 0.  However, I have on Disk 1, three different partitions that look like what the Seagate should have.  However, I am unable to assign a drive letter to the partitions.  I am attaching an image.

Help.

[kenji57]

Disk0 is yor PC's internal hard drive, so best not to mess with that one. The recovery partition D: lets you reinstall your operating system without CD's(DVD's)

I'm not sure why you can't assign drive letters or why you have 3 partitions on the external drive, but if you no longer need the data on the drive there should be no problem with deleting them and starting again (but don't mess with disk0).

Is there a reason you need 3 partitions or did the DVR set them up like that?

Edit: on second look at your screenshot, the filesystems on the portable drive partitions aren't displayed, so I guess the DVR set up the partitions with filesystem that windows doesn't recognize. That would explain why you can't assign letters.

[beyondsoccermom]

When I right click on each of the three partitions on Disk 1, my only option is "Delete Volume". If I right click on Disk 1, itself, (to the left of three partitions, my only option is "Convert to Dynamic Disk".

I really don't know what I can do to get my Seagate drive accessible.

[silence711]

Run diskpart on the drive...that will give you one partition instead of the three that the DVR setup on the drive.

Initialize the disk again in disk management (right click on Disk # and select initialize, then click OK on the box that appears)

Right click on the part that says "unallocated"

Make sure you do a quick format on the drive so it won't take forever...

If you need the software for the drive again, you can contact support to obtain a new copy or see if you can download it from the website.

[beyondsoccermom]

I"m not that familiar with "DiskPart".  I have read up about it at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

What commands do I run to get the Seagate drive into one partition?

So far, within DiskPart, I have executed the following commands successfully:

list disk

select disk=1

detail disk

list partition

What next?

[kenji57]

You should be able to delete the partitions in Disk Management.

Microsoft seem to use the terms partition and volume as the same thing so lets just say they are for your problem.

Just delete the 3 volumes (as you said before, you just need to do this individually for the 3 existing volumes) and add a new NTFS simple volume

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/Create-and-format-a-hard-disk-partition

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2670-partition-volume-extend.html

[beyondsoccermom]

Thank you.  Using Disk Management (and not DiskPart), I deleted the three volumes.  Then, after clicking around a bit, was able to "quick format" the Seagate drive and now it's one giant NTFS volume.

Backing up now from my laptop.

I appreciate your help.