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Win2000 disk error checking causing dama

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by ldn1

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I ran error-checking in Windows 2000 (the option with defrag)
on my external hard drive (Maxtor 60G, firewire) for the 1st time.
Now the drive is recognized but Win2000 says that it is not formatted.
The drive was working fine before this.
I need help in getting it working again and saving the data.
Please answer to ldn603@yahoo.com.
Much thanks to any advise.

2 replies

by mfischer

Try the following.

Start Win2k with the external hdd disconnected. Let it boot, log on, and then shut the pc down. Plug the externall hdd into a different firewire port and restart the machine, making sure that the hdd is powered on and ready.Because of the way that Windows enumerates each port it will see the device somewhat differently. If you're successful it should let you access the file system. It's hopeful that you were using the NTFS file system on that drive. If you were using FAT32 you may run into some more trouble if the drives root partition was marked as active. What you may want to do if the above fails is deliver more information as to how the drive was configured. IE - 1 volume (or partition) that was marked active mounting as drive x.

Contact me directly if you'd like. Good luck.

by ldn1

The suggested solution did not work for me. Maxtor told me that the drive was originally formated as Fat32.
So I lost all data. Lesson is to know that Fat32 is not suitable for big HD and reformat it as NTFS. In general, remember Windows is still unreliable.

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