So, one of my external hard drives is a standard 3.5" 7200RPM 1TB SATA2 HDD in a Vantec Nexstar CX USB 3.0 driv enclosure. I use this drive primarily for back up and it had been working fine with one exception (to be explained later) up until this point. Yesterday I partially disassembled my rig just to do some basic cleaning out / dusting and to move some the cables around to help airflow...basic stuff. When I plug everything back in and power it up Windows tells me that my USB 3.0 external needs to be formatted before it can be used...which is bulls*** because it was working fine before I unplugged it. I tried plugging it into the other USB 3.0 port on my mobo and again with no luck. Now, sometimes, when I would unplug and replug the external it would wait several seconds and then ask me to reformat, other times I would hear the sound of the USB device being continuously connected and disconnected via that damn Windows sound that plays. I tested that my USB 2.0 flash drives work in the 3.0 ports just fine, and also, the 3.0 external works if I plug it into a 2.0 port...told you it doesn't need to be formatted... I tried uninstalling and deleting and then reinstalling the USB 3.0 drivers but that didn't seem to help...neither did multiple system reboots. Now, as for the previous issue I had with this drive...it was the same exact issue. It happened a little while ago and I can't remember exactly what I did to fix it, but I'm reasonably certain it involved reinstalling the entire OS which I'd really rather not do since I just did that only about a week ago. Would really appreciate any insight into this.