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Computer help forum: reformat hard drive with external cd drive??

by: patty63 November 14, 2012 7:15 PM PST

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reformat hard drive with external cd drive??

by patty63 - 11/14/12 7:15 PM

I have a dell inspiron 1720 laptop running Vista and it needs to be reformatted badly!! My problem is the internal cd drive doesn't work any longer, so I use an external drive for whenever I need to run a cd. How can I do a reformat using the external drive? I went into setup and changed the boot sequence, but it didn't work.
Thanks!
Patty


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The Best Fix Is To Replace The Internal DVD/CD Drive

by Grif Thomas Moderator - 11/15/12 12:06 PM

In Reply to: reformat hard drive with external cd drive?? by patty63

Booting from an external USB drive is not available on some computers and on those computers where it is workable, you'll need to change the settings in the BIOS so it can boot from USB. (You'll need to check for the USB settings, not just the boot order. On this computer it's under "Legacy Support" in the BIOS and it must be enabled.) Unfortunately, problems frequently occur even when it will boot from USB.

Here, we always fix the DVD/CD drive first, (they're not expensive and it's an easy fix), then make it the first drive in the boot order, and install the OS..

Hope this helps.

Grif


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Usually about 20 something bucks to replace.

by R. Proffitt Moderator - 11/15/12 12:14 PM

In Reply to: reformat hard drive with external cd drive?? by patty63

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=BLK-TS-L633-DO-NP&cat=DVD is 18 bucks plus shipping so I always replace the drive because it fixes the issue for cheap.
Bob


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