Iomega 500gb external HD wants to be formated

[truman861]

Hello,
I have a 500gb iomega externad hdd that I think has been dropped one too many times and now the laptop is telling me it needs to be formatted.
I have years of data on the drive and dont want to do this.
When I plug it in it whirs, clicks, flashes and asks to format after about 1 min.
I used some software that said there is no partition?
Could someone please help

 

[truman861]

The software that said there is no partition was Tenorshare Data Recovery but was unable to restore the partition as you have to buy it and not sure if I want to fork out money for something that may not work.
I also downloaded something called Easeus that doesnt even recognize that the drive is plugged in.
BTW - I know the word of the day is BACKUP ! I have learned my lesson and will do so going forward.

 

[instarx]

I had the exact same problem with my eGo 500 MB drive. The drive letter was recognized by the PC but I kept getting the message that it needed to be formatted and was not accessible. The step-by-step from Iomega did nothing to solve the problem. Iomega's data recovery service would have cost $1,500!

I found a utility called Seagate Data Recovery that recognized the drive, its label and all the files on it. It recovered all my files, over 250 GBs! Whew! It was very simple to use. You can download this program free from Seagate and try it in demo mode to see if it will work for your drive. To use it for large files you will have to buy it for $99. Well worth the price!