My hard drive needs formatted but i dont know how to do it!!

[Guest]

i have a seagate external hard drive. and all of a sudden it started saying i need to format the drive whenever i plug it in.
And when ever i click format is says it cant do it. plus the hard drive has loads of my photos, music and films on it that will get erased when i do format it so what do i do to retrive all my stuff?

 

[GhislainG]

Do you have copies of the most important files elsewhere? I hope so as you can't presume that a hard disk will never fail. Don't try any recovery utility until you are absolutely sure that losing all of your data might be acceptable.

 

[jsmakkar]

i have a seagate external hard drive. and all of a sudden it started saying i need to format the drive whenever i plug it in.
And when ever i click format is says it cant do it. plus the hard drive has loads of my photos, music and films on it that will get erased when i do format it so what do i do to retrive all my stuff?

Download free version of Recuva and back up all your data.

 

[alyoshka]

There's nothing you can do about it with any software.
The only thing you can do now is to remove the HDD from USB enclosure and plug it into the Mobo and use it as an Internal HDD.
While you're at it, it would be worth while to note down the Part number, serial number and the Firmware which would be stuck on the HDD inside the enclosure. Check the drives warranty.
Once it is on as a internal HDD, backup all you data onto another better or newer drive and then repack the stuff and send it back if possible.
It sounds a little complicated but is the easiest thing to do and helps save the data that would be lost in case you end up formatting it or because of a bad USB contact.