External Hard Drive being a pain

Post by **andyman** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:44 pm

...in the ASS.

Last week I had to reinstall windows on my secondary internal hard drive and make that the master. Now when I plug in my external hard drive (USB) it says I have to reformat it. It even says the same thing on my laptop.

Of course, reformatting is completely out of the question. i have over a years worth of pictures and videos that weren't backed up before this happened.

Any help on getting it recognized and used?

Thanks

Post by **Foo** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:53 pm

Were you using any encryption on the drive? Any security software?

Have you used it on your laptop (the one you didn't change) before without problems?

Post by **andyman** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:55 pm

I don't think I was using any special type of encryption....it worked on alot of other peoples computers before this.

It worked on my laptop too, and I really can't see any reason why it shouldn't work now....it jsut doesn't make any sense

edit: I had to reformat the laptop on the same day as the desktop.

Post by **axbaby** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 12:21 am

tricky

is it a fat32 ..ntsf problem ... i have no clue here.

Post by **andyman** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 12:26 am

If I had to guess.....

When I was getting everything ready to reinstall windows I still had it plugged in. The internal hard drive is 200gb and so is the external, so when I would pick a hdd to prepare (i dont know terms) I might have picked the wrong one or something. Either way I don't think I'll ever get back into that hard drive.

1 year of deployment photos, videos, and what not completely fucked by microsoft. Maybe not them but I gotta blame something

Post by **axbaby** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 4:41 am

can you boot from the usb first then Fix? the drive may have hidden boot files
and it may load ??

Post by **Zackdos** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 4:42 am

I had a Maxtor One touch that was acting the same way today at work. I tried everything. I then removed the HD from the enclosure and connected to a computer running 2000 on the IDE for the CD-ROM. I had to change the jumper settings 3 times before it would boot with the HD that was originally USD. It booted up and stated that the drive had errors and asked me if I wanted it to correct them. sorry i dont remember the details but that is what I had to do today to get mine working.

Also my main computer at work hates new firewire/USB Hd's and always names the new drive f: which is currently in use for a network share. I go to manage the computer and manually assign a drive letter and that corrected it as well.

Hope this helps.

ZackDos

Post by **glossy** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 5:18 am

failing everything, you might be able to find a data retrieval place somewhere to send the drive and have them take a look at it... we had a flash card that fubar'd (same kinda issue) and we got it back with all our lost photos, plus some stuff we deleted. good stuff.