Cannot open Toshiba 1TB External Drive

[stratosphere1]

Hello.

I all of a sudden cannot open my external HD I've owned for 2 years. After about a few seconds after plugging in the HD as I normally would, this message pops up: "You need to format the disk in drive E:\ before you can use it. Do you want to format it?" (Always clicked on "Cancel") and whenever I check in Computer, it shows up as Local Disk ( E: ) instead of "TOSHIBA EXT ( E: )". It also neither displays either a "X used of 1TB" or a percentage used of HD bar (don't know if it has a name. Sorry).

To see if it's just my computer (Windows 7), I try my Win10 laptop, it behaves differently, although I still cannot access my files. Instead of not showing a data used bar or "X used of 1TB", it shows up as "279GB free of 279GB" with an empty data used bar, and instead of "Local Disk ( E: )" it shows up as "DATA ( D: )", openable and has the folders "$RECYCLE.BIN", "msdownld.tmp" and "System Volume Information", all folders greyed out. Can some one please help me? Even if I can just get the information off the hard drive and am no longer able to use it, that is fine.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there stratosphere1,

How does the drive appear under Disk Management?(Unallocated?)
It is possible that the drive has lost its partitions. You can use some partition/data recovery tool: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1956932/recover-files-unallocated-space-external-hard-drive.html

After that, you can test the drive and see if these is something wrong with it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[stratosphere1]

Hi there stratosphere1,

How does the drive appear under Disk Management?(Unallocated?)
It is possible that the drive has lost its partitions. You can use some partition/data recovery tool: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1956932/recover-files-unallocated-space-external-hard-drive.html

After that, you can test the drive and see if these is something wrong with it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

The drive appears as "Healthy" for the hard drive, both on Win7 and Win10.

 

[D_Know_WD]

What doesn't seem right over there? It would be best if you could provide a screenshot of Disk Management.
Apart from that, it will not hurt to try to retrieve the data with a data recovery tool: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

Also, you can try to run disk check: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/check-your-hard-disk-for-errors

D_Know_WD