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Hi all. I've got a friends external HD that is suddenly telling them that it needs formatting when he plugs it in but of course it's got lots of data on.
It's been a while since I've used free data recovery utils, I've had a google and there's loads so can anyone reccommend one that would be good in this situation?
Cheers all :)
I get loads of these from staff who don't eject them cleanly in vista. I have tried several tools to fix the problem most of which have made the situation worse. The best way I have found to deal with it is use a live cd to boot into your favourite Linux, mount the drive and copy the contents off, re-format the drive and copy it all back again. Then sit back and wait for them to do it again!
have you tried taking it out the case and connecting via normal SATA? might just be the Sata>USB interface is dodgy - worked for me in the past
EDIT: also it sometimes is teh case if the autorun.ini file goes awol
It is worth trying to connect the external HD to a different computer. I had a couple of memory sticks that were doing this, but I discovered (by accident) that they worked on one particular machine in school. I have no idea why; they just did!
Sometimes if you plug it back into the same usb port on the same computer that it was last working on it works. Again like @elsiegee40 I don't know why, but then again I have never really looked into it, just pleased that its worked.
Hmm yes I have a USB scanner that works on one particular port.
I'll try a few ideas and a live CD. Cheers