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Format Error on External Hard drive

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4 replies

by karshs

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I have a dell studio laptop with Vista OS.

I use a external hard disk to save al my information. I am a student of research and lot of my works have been saved on it - academic, work. And i have a collection of pics, videos, music and a lot of research with my thesis stored in it.

I plugged my hard disk on an old computer with OS Windows XP and it said

Disk has to be formatted to be used and i cancelled the format ofcourse.

Now i tried using the hard disk on the Vista running laptop and it says the same thing

Disk to be formatted to be used.

And i really really don't want to format it. I tried reading it on different comps , it still says the same thing.

Please please can you help me out of this...I don't want to lose the information I collected over 6s years, please :( ...

Thanks you.

4 replies

by oh smeg

By not dismounting the HDD on the Vista System. You need to use the Safely Remove Option on every External HDD before unplugging it or turning the system off.

Turning the system off doesn't send the External HDD the correct signal to shut down it just removes the power and leaves the HDD to it's own devices to park the Heads and make the drive safe. You may get away with running CHKDSK on the External Drive to repair the File Structure but it just as likely may not work and then you'll need to employ some form of Data Recovery Software that can rebuild the Partition Tables.

If the data is [b]Important[/b] as apposed to being [b]Nice[/b] to get back you really should send this drive to a specialist Data Recovery House and pay them to recover the Data off it. However if you can accept loosing the data you can try one of the software alternatives here is a very short list of some that are available.

http://tinyurl.com/273ay5

http://tinyurl.com/rmvrv

http://tinyurl.com/yvrsl

http://tinyurl.com/yyk8cm

http://tinyurl.com/382vm

http://tinyurl.com/ynwnel

http://tinyurl.com/nc4kx

http://tinyurl.com/2wox7l

http://tinyurl.com/374d8b

http://tinyurl.com/djw6u

http://tinyurl.com/f73se

http://tinyurl.com/8bd3f

http://tinyurl.com/afu2j

While the last 2 are from the same company they are very different products. Win Hex should only be considered for use by someone who knows Hex Inside Out while Davory is a great cheap General Purpose Application.

Personally I prefer the On Track Option but it's anything but cheap. However because I use this type of software a lot it's paid for itself many times over by now, for a cheaper option Spin Rite from Gibson Research or Stella have both very good reputations by other TR members.

Col

by mafergus

on the drive. Make sure there are no issues first. Windows will give that message sometimes if there are hardware issues with the drive. Good luck. If it is hardware and the drive utilities can't fix it, you may need to send it to a data recovery outfit.

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