Nan S :
Mr201 :
Open cmd , type chkdsk /f h: . .
change h to your hdd like e: or d: . .
May that help you
Thanks for this post!! I had stored important data from 3 desktops in my external HDD when suddenly it asked me to format it! This was the only back up i had n u can imagine my shock n trauma! Your suggestion resolved the problem within minutes!
thanks again!
Does this erase the files on the HDD or not? I'm to scared to do it on my own just in case it deletes everything.
The step suggested will NOT delete everything. I can understand the apprehension, since there are people who find it amusing to have people run commands that wipe their computer for "fun". "chkdsk" is the windows program to check a drive for errors (check disk, abbreviated). The /f switch tells it to fix any errors that it finds on the disk (rather than just telling you it found errors and having to run it again). The h:, or e:, or d:, or whatever, is just telling it which drive to check, that's why you need to use whatever the letter is for your drive. If you're curious and would like to see what all options are available when running chkdsk, you can type "chkdsk /?" at the command prompt (without the quotes of course).