May 23, 200620 yr I have a Western Digital 250 GB My Book Premium Hard Drive It was/is a Fat32 formatted drive and I used it for over a month with no problem. Just 2 days ago when I try to access it, it says: So I guess I have a few questions: 1) If I format it, I will lose my data on the drive, correct? 2) Is there anyway to get Windows to accept the Fat32 setting? 3) If I am going to have to format it, does anyone know of any free software (or something found easily on bittorrent) to get my data off of the drive? Thanks in advance.
May 23, 200620 yr It looks like the drive can be connected through USB 2.0 and FireWire - have you tried using both? (I don't know that it would make a difference, but you could try). Unfortunately you are correct Yes, you will lose your data if you format.
May 23, 200620 yr Author Yeah, I tried both of those, thanks for the response though. Apparently the partition on the drive is messed up, probably caused when we had a power outage a few days ago. I'm going to try and use some data recovery programs and see if I can get my files off of it. If anyone knows of any good ones, please share.
May 23, 200620 yr I have a Western Digital 250 GB My Book Premium Hard Drive It was/is a Fat32 formatted drive and I used it for over a month with no problem. Just 2 days ago when I try to access it, it says: So I guess I have a few questions: 1) If I format it, I will lose my data on the drive, correct? 2) Is there anyway to get Windows to accept the Fat32 setting? 3) If I am going to have to format it, does anyone know of any free software (or something found easily on bittorrent) to get my data off of the drive? Thanks in advance. 1) If you format it you will lose all your data on there. 2) Windows will accept FAT32 setting as long as you reformat the drive in that format using FDISK or a simple format c: 3) I can assist you with data backup via Norton Ghosting. Let me know bro. I know what its like to lose data.
May 23, 200620 yr Also another thing you might want to try is to unplug the drive from the USB and reconnect it and let the PC try to recognize it again. If it does go and try to safely remove hardware by clicking on the link on your system tray and removing the drive. Once done safely see if it helped at all.
May 23, 200620 yr Author I have a Western Digital 250 GB My Book Premium Hard Drive It was/is a Fat32 formatted drive and I used it for over a month with no problem. Just 2 days ago when I try to access it, it says: So I guess I have a few questions: 1) If I format it, I will lose my data on the drive, correct? 2) Is there anyway to get Windows to accept the Fat32 setting? 3) If I am going to have to format it, does anyone know of any free software (or something found easily on bittorrent) to get my data off of the drive? Thanks in advance. 1) If you format it you will lose all your data on there. 2) Windows will accept FAT32 setting as long as you reformat the drive in that format using FDISK or a simple format c: 3) I can assist you with data backup via Norton Ghosting. Let me know bro. I know what its like to lose data. What is Norton Ghosting? Just out of curiosity Passion, what OS are you running to use FAT32? Windows XP SP2 Also another thing you might want to try is to unplug the drive from the USB and reconnect it and let the PC try to recognize it again. If it does go and try to safely remove hardware by clicking on the link on your system tray and removing the drive. Once done safely see if it helped at all. Yeah I've done all of those things, never changed anything. I'm using a freeware program called PC Inspector Smart Recovery right now, like I expected it is a slow process going through all the partitions.
May 23, 200620 yr I have a Western Digital 250 GB My Book Premium Hard Drive It was/is a Fat32 formatted drive and I used it for over a month with no problem. Just 2 days ago when I try to access it, it says: So I guess I have a few questions: 1) If I format it, I will lose my data on the drive, correct? 2) Is there anyway to get Windows to accept the Fat32 setting? 3) If I am going to have to format it, does anyone know of any free software (or something found easily on bittorrent) to get my data off of the drive? Thanks in advance. 1) If you format it you will lose all your data on there. 2) Windows will accept FAT32 setting as long as you reformat the drive in that format using FDISK or a simple format c: 3) I can assist you with data backup via Norton Ghosting. Let me know bro. I know what its like to lose data. What is Norton Ghosting? Just out of curiosity Passion, what OS are you running to use FAT32? Windows XP SP2 Also another thing you might want to try is to unplug the drive from the USB and reconnect it and let the PC try to recognize it again. If it does go and try to safely remove hardware by clicking on the link on your system tray and removing the drive. Once done safely see if it helped at all. Yeah I've done all of those things, never changed anything. I'm using a freeware program called PC Inspector Smart Recovery right now, like I expected it is a slow process going through all the partitions. Norton Ghost will allow you to create a full image of everything on the harddrive, then format the drive and reload all the data back on. I use this when I do a reinstall of Windows XP, get my box set back up the way I like it with all the programs installed, then ghost the drive so I have a backup copy in case my drive crashes in the future.
May 23, 200620 yr Speed? Cost? Free from me. I will hit you up on AIM to sort it out. Are you in a rush or can i take care of it after work today?
May 23, 200620 yr Author Speed? Cost? Free from me. I will hit you up on AIM to sort it out. Are you in a rush or can i take care of it after work today? It's a favor so do it whenever it is convienent for you.
May 23, 200620 yr Okay, this sounds like a corrupt partition table. The first thing I would try is to remove the drive from the device [i'm assuming it's a Linksys NAS?] and plug it in to a free IDE port in your PC [make sure you change the jumper to either cable-select or slave]. See if you get another drive in your pc when you boot up. If you do, pull the data off and onto your c drive. Then, pull the hd - change the settings back - put it back in te device - and reformat in NTFS. NTFS has better security and less overhead. Another utility worth trying is fdisk. If you don't have a good copy, you can get an enhanced version from here: http://ffdisk.webaps.de/fdisk121.zip Good luck, brother.
May 23, 200620 yr Speed? Cost? Free from me. I will hit you up on AIM to sort it out. Are you in a rush or can i take care of it after work today? It's a favor so do it whenever it is convienent for you. I'll holla at you after work. :thumbup
May 23, 200620 yr Author Okay, this sounds like a corrupt partition table. The first thing I would try is to remove the drive from the device [i'm assuming it's a Linksys NAS?] and plug it in to a free IDE port in your PC [make sure you change the jumper to either cable-select or slave]. See if you get another drive in your pc when you boot up. If you do, pull the data off and onto your c drive. Then, pull the hd - change the settings back - put it back in te device - and reformat in NTFS. NTFS has better security and less overhead. Another utility worth trying is fdisk. If you don't have a good copy, you can get an enhanced version from here: http://ffdisk.webaps.de/fdisk121.zip Good luck, brother. I appreciate the help, but this isn't an internal HD, it's an external functioning through a USB.
May 24, 200620 yr Author Sweet Jesus I fixed it. TestDisk is a damn savior, apparently some of the partitions got screwy when I had the power outage and that program re-wrote and fixed them. Alot of music, porn, and other videos saved a terrible fate today.
May 24, 200620 yr I appreciate the help, but this isn't an internal HD, it's an external functioning through a USB. Yeah, Linksys NAS and Maxtor On-Touch are also external disk devices. You CAN remove them from their housing and use them as internal slave disks in emergency situations like this. Fdisk does similar recovery work to TestDisk. Anyway, good to hear that you recovered your porn... :thumbup
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