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Hello,
I have recently updated my NAS drives and replaced two 10TB drives with two 20TB drives. I would like to use those two 10TB drives as backup storage drives (external hard drives). I bought a couple of different tools, an enclosure and a plug-in wire set up, but neither let my laptop recognize the drives. Is there a specific enclosure or cable that will work, or do I need to go with a NAS unit? The drives are Seagate Ironwolf 10TB.
Thanks,
Derek
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You can use an external hard drive enclosure designed for 3.5 inch SATA drives, which should work with your Seagate Ironwolf 10TB drives. Make sure the enclosure supports the correct interface (e.g. USB 3.0) and connection type (e.g. SATA III) for your laptop. Some enclosures may require a separate power supply, so be sure to check the specifications before purchasing. If you encounter compatibility issues with the enclosure and cable you have, you may need to try a different combination or purchase a new one.
To wipe partitions and format the Seagate Ironwolf 10TB drives in Windows, follow these steps:
Connect the drive to your Windows PC using a suitable SATA to USB cable or an external hard drive enclosure.
Open the Disk Management tool in Windows by pressing the Windows key + X and selecting Disk Management from the list.
In the Disk Management tool, you should see the new drive appear as unallocated space. Right-click on the unallocated space and select "New Simple Volume".
Follow the on-screen prompts to create a new partition on the drive, making sure to select "Primary" and "NTFS" as the file system.
Once the new partition is created, right-click on the drive and select "Format".
Choose "NTFS" as the file system again, and set the volume label to something descriptive (e.g. "Backup Drive 1").
Click "OK" to start the format process. This may take several minutes depending on the size of the drive.
Repeat steps 3-7 for any additional drives you want to format.
Once the format process is complete, you should now be able to access and use the drives as external backup storage.
