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I purchased two 12tb hdd's for my ZyXel Nas326 and put them into the nas and started fresh.

Now I am stuck trying to get my win11 machine to recognize either of the two 4tb hdd's I took out. I really need to use them for my pc.

Is there a way to revert them back to gpt or mbr?

Ramhound
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Todd Thomas
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  • How do you connect them to your machine? – Romeo Ninov Oct 31 '22 at 08:40
  • I have only tried with a usb enclosure. – Todd Thomas Oct 31 '22 at 08:47
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    Do the HDDs show up in Disk Management `diskmgmt.msc`? If it's a partition table issue, they should still show up there. – u1686_grawity Oct 31 '22 at 08:48
  • yes they do show in Disk Management. But they will not format, delete partition or anything that would allow me to wipe them and start clean. They also show up in Aeomei partition assistant, but unable to do anything either. Also I do not care about any of the data thats on those drives, I have them backed up already. – Todd Thomas Oct 31 '22 at 09:04
  • First read and understand this https://community.zyxel.com/en/discussion/8975/nas326-recover-data-from-hdd and yes, we know recovering data isn't your goal here. Try booting a live session of a Linux distro (or use any desktop Linux), like Ubuntu, open Gparted, select the drive from the dropdown menu then Devices > New Partition table, choose GPT. Now you'll be able to create new partitions. – ChanganAuto Oct 31 '22 at 09:57
  • https://superuser.com/questions/509992/unable-to-format-disk-the-system-cannot-find-the-file-specified/756613#756613. If you can see them in Disk Management that should fix your problem as well. After a full clear Windows will recognize them as empty drives and will offer to initialize (== make valid partition table) them. – Tonny Oct 31 '22 at 10:43
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    Note that not all usb enclosures can work with large format disks. I got a new disk last year and had to buy a new enclosure for it, because my existing one would not support disks of the newest sizes. – Frank Thomas Oct 31 '22 at 13:43
  • Please provide a screenshot of Disk Management and also the exact text of any error message you may be getting trying to format them or whatever. – Daniel B Oct 31 '22 at 14:06
  • Hello ... So I ended up having to put the hdd's in my pc because every live cd I tried refused to boot with a hdd connected to usb. Then I booted linux mint live cd and gparted my hdd's and they now work in my windows pc. THANK YOU ALL FOR HELPING AND GUIDING THE WAY!!! – Todd Thomas Oct 31 '22 at 22:04

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