Vista wants to format usb hard drive

[skyjumper]

I am running win7 now when I plug in my usb ide hdd win 7 wants to format the drive I have vital data on hence its an external drive I keep for backup etc can any one help me

 

[GhislainG]

Is it recognized on other systems? Formatted in FAT32 or NTFS?

 

[skyjumper]

Is it recognized on other systems? Formatted in FAT32 or NTFS?

Hi thanks for the fast reply that dose not help me as I have data on the drive that I need it was seen on win xp my old system but I have win 7 now and no longer have xp to retrieve the data

 

[GhislainG]

Was that external drive ever connected to the system while you installed Windows 7? I would definitely try it on a different PC.

 

[skyjumper]

Hi again I had win xp pro on my computer and at xmas Iwas given win 7 so I changed my MB procesor and ram to upgrade from xp the drive was attached to xp and I kept my backups and other data for safe keeping but after I installed win seven on a new sata drive the problem came to light win 7 sees the drive in my computer and in device manager also in disk manager but when you try to explore the drive it comes up format this disk I know my data is still on it but win 7 wont let me into it