external Go-Flex 1.36 gig hard drive not recognised

[MFourie10]

Good day
I've got an external Go-Flex 1.36 gig hard drive and my PC can't read from it. Keeps on telling me to format it but as soon as i try to format it , I get the massage the win can't format the drive. So I thought that the connection to the drive was the problem. But my task-manager does pick it up.Are there any tools to check my drive, I don't really wanna format it. Can anybody help me ?

 

[joex444]

By 1.36GB you mean 1.5TB, right?

Is this something you've used previously with success or is this a brand new drive?

If it's new, you very well may need to format it in order to use it. If it's something you've used, then it may be a partition issue. Is it possible it's an exFAT drive and your PC can't read exFAT, for example?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there MFourie10,

Well, you don't really want to format it, yet you've tried to do that.
Anyway, formatting could be data destructive, so you need to see if you will be able to recover the data first. It is strange that you didn't manage to format it though.

My suggestion would be to try to access the data stored on the drive with some data recovery tool: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
After that, you can check its health status out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

If the tools can't access the drive, then you will need to use a different USB cable and attach it to another system.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD