Hi,

Recently I noticed some problems with one of my internal hard drives in my computer and decided to transfer all the files onto my external hard drive and then format it so that it hopefully works better. Even transferring the files from the hard drive to the external one took ages, longer than usual. Once the files were transferred I attempted to format the hard drive via Disk Management on Windows 8.1. However it came back with the format couldn't complete and the hard drive type was RAW and not the desired NTFS. So I started searching the internet to see what to do and tried different ideas and nothing seems to work. I tried:

-Formatting the hard drive via EaseUS Partition Master
-Downloaded Hard Disk sentinel (wasn't exactly sure what to do with it, but a quick test showed it was healthy)
-Tried to follow these steps but it didn't seem to work, since it wasn't the same as he said.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have no idea what else to do.

what model ?
can we see the s.m.a.r.t.

Once I also had a similar situation when after some *nix all the software I tried (including dedicated and LowLevelFormats) couldn't reformat the HDD, so I tried many things in vain until come to SecurityErase (built-in routine). One can do it in DOS utils like Victoria/MHDD/HDAT and others via Master Security Lock/Unlock or, which is much easier, with a single click in a Windows x32 version of Victoria--very recommended.

After the SE procedure (depends on the size; rather long), I could easily format the HDD no problem and had AAM properly enabled (which earlier was somehow disabled every boot).

NB: it nils the data, removes soft-bads, and resets all the params to factory defaults!