External Hard Disk asking to format....

[nani455]

Hello All,

My name is Venkat, I have a Transcend Hard Disk 500 GB.....and I've been using it since 1 Year.

Recently, I'm unaware of what happened to it, If I connect it to my laptop or any other PC, it is asking me to format.

I cant even open it, cant ready any data from it....If initiated for error check, to start an error check also, it is asking me to format.

Your help is very much appreciated, I've lot of important data in my hard disk....


Thanks in Advance !!

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Venkat, & Welcome to Tom's Hardware!

Please give us the model # and cable connector type of your removable HDD. Is this USB connected, and does the HDD get its power from the USB cable?

Also with this HDD connected and turned on, boot up your laptop to the desktop, then go to Disk Management, and in the lower graphical area, please list what it reports about this drive. It should be Disk 1, or Disk 2. Report what is in the Disk Status colum and Volume Status column. If present what is the color of the band above the Volume Status info?

 

[nani455]

Hi John,

Thanks for coming back so promptly.Between sorry for the delayed response.

Coming to the specifications,

Booted up the laptop post connecting HDD.

This is Store Jet 500 GB which was bought an yr back bearing the no. 3329342948. USB is connected, HDD is getting the power supply as the backup button is glowing with blue color. Mentioned on the cable as "USB 2.0 High Speed type E251672 syle 2725 28AWG/IP AND 24AWG/2C VW-1 80 C 30V"

In the Disk Management, HDD is showing as dark blue color band above volume status with Disk 1 listing

465.76 GB RAW
Healthy (Primary Partition)

Please suggest

Thanks in advance

 

[FireWire2]

DO NOT FORMAT the drive under ANY circumstance
Right My Computer --> Manage --> Disk Management

Right click on long bar of that drive
Select change drive letter and path option
Assign a new drive letter

You should be able to see you data

 

[nani455]

Hi,

Changed the drive letter to P.Its still the same..



R's,
Venkat

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi again,

That's helpful info. The fact that there is a blue band above the VolumeStatus and it says Healthy (Primary Partition) means there is a partition in place. I agree with Firewire, it's worth a try to right click on the Volume Status and one of the choices is 'Change Drive Letter and Paths". Change the drive letter to say "K" or another DriveLetter that's not used. I doubt it will make any difference since "Raw" means no File system is in place, rather than a Partition problem, but it's worth a try.

If no luck, then you will need to use a Data Recovery Program. Do not reformat it.

Would recommend the Easeus Data Recovery Wizard Free Edition, which may be able to reestablish the NTFS files system, or recover your files to a separate drive. Here is the link to their very good products:

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard

Besides the home edition, they have a Commercial Ed $69.95 Prof Edition $89.95 which has additional features, but the Home Edition is very good.

 

[GhislainG]

This is Store Jet 500 GB which was bought an yr back bearing the no. 3329342948. USB is connected, HDD is getting the power supply as the backup button is glowing with blue color. Mentioned on the cable as "USB 2.0 High Speed type E251672 syle 2725 28AWG/IP AND 24AWG/2C VW-1 80 C 30V"

You didn't specify which StoreJet 500 GB drive you own. In addition to USB, does it also have an eSATA connector?

 

[nani455]

Hi,

Yes it does..having one more connector..



Thanks

 

[GhislainG]

Hi,

Yes it does..having one more connector..



Thanks

Was it ever connected using eSATA?

 

[nani455]

Was it ever connected using eSATA?

Nope,I never tried connecting it..that was the reason why I forgot to mention about it previously,as its of no use for me basically..

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi again,

Just a note to consider. Your removable drive already is recognized by the OS, as Disk 1, and the Partition is in place, as it says Healthy (Primary Partition) with a blue band above it. So the problem is not with the connector cable, the connection seems good.

The key finding is it's is reporting 465.76 GB or RAW data, meaning there is no file system or data in place.

Since you know you have data on the disk, it's probably still there (may or may not be readable), leaving a corrupted file system & data recovery as the item to be addressed.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Firstly,recover your data on the external hard drive with third party data recovery software.Then you can format it to check out whether it can be fixed.For data recovery software,I have a professional one on my computer that can It can recover data after deeply scanning your portable drive to look for lost data due to drive crash,system sabotage, virus attack etc.You can download it and scan your drive for free to preview whether your data can be recovered. Get it from http://www.any-data-recovery.com/product/datarecoveryprofessional.htm

Hi there,
What more can you tell us about Tenorshare Data Recovery products? Looks like a good product. However, they don't even list what country they are from, and no telephone support. Have you personally used their Standard product, or tried the Enterprise Recovery product that states it works with RAID? Or have you compared its features to that of Easeus Partition Master or Data Recovery Wizard? Always nice to have another Data Recovery Solution when they are reliable. The Standard $29.95 price is reasonable.