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External hd says it needs to be formatted

Last response: in Storage
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Hello,

I hope this is the right place to ask. Apologies if it isn't! Also, I saw this question asked pretty frequently, but while I did search for an answer, it seemed everyone recommended a different solution, so I figured I'd just ask here to get the final word.

My external HD, an ADATA SH93, won't open, and it keeps saying that I need to format it. I backed it up this morning at home, but I've done a lot of work since then, so there are a few very important files that I need on the drive.

I tried various USB ports, and I've tried connecting it to a different computer, but it still has this problem.

I think the problem occurred because I DC-d the USB without ejecting it first (I was really late to class, and the drive wouldn't eject even after I closed EVERY open program). However, even after I DC-d without ejecting, I managed to use the drive 2 times without any trouble.

How can I go about recovering my files and fixing my HD (preferably for free)? I'm not very tech-savvy so please explain it in layman terms. Appreciate the help, and happy Thursday!

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Ejecting media from a hd???

Anyways, yes you'll lose your files if you format, but you just said you backed it up this morning. Any new files from today you can put on a cd or flash drive.

How old is it? Have you attempted a disk cleanup or defrag? Are you able to run manufacturer diagnostic tools on it?
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Sorry if this is a silly question but how would i save my work from today somewhere else? The only place it is saved is on the external hd, which i cannot access.

Hd is one month old. I am not near a computer now so I'll try your suggestions when i get home. My computer isnt able to access anything about the drive though, not even how much space it has. Would it be able to defrag the drive?

That sounds good, just make sure its going to recover your partition and not the data only.

at least at first.

if you use a data recovery program it could take longer and leave you with a bunch of files and folders that are not named correctly.

The partition recovery will try to restore the drive to its previous condition.

rheemixed said:
Sorry if this is a silly question but how would i save my work from today somewhere else? The only place it is saved is on the external hd, which i cannot access.

Hd is one month old. I am not near a computer now so I'll try your suggestions when i get home. My computer isnt able to access anything about the drive though, not even how much space it has. Would it be able to defrag the drive?


Sorry if this is sillier, but how did you save your work to it if you cannot access it???

alohascott said:
by the way i understood what you said the first time.
I am not sure why others are having trouble with it.


You must not have read it very cleary then.

First he said it wouldn't open, then he said it wouldn't eject media, hd's don't eject media or open.

Second he said he backed it up this morning, but he was afraid to format it because he would lose his data.....huh?

3rd he said he was unable to access the drive at all, yet he saved work to it....huh?

Then he used DC'd as an abbreviation of "disconnected", which sorry, I'm not a psychic text abbreviator.

I'll just back out of this thread and let the psychic friends network continue helping you.




Quote:
Hi,

You need to format your hard drive in order to use it further. But don't worry you can recover files from formatted hard drive by using a tool called Hard Drive Recovery. Last time when I too faced the similar situation, I was able to restore formatted hard drive data by using this tool. I hope this may help you in this situation. You can find both Windows and Mac supported edition of this software.
For more details visit: http://www.****/mac-file-recovery/recover-files-from-formatted-mac-volumes


That link is either down, or you screwed it up. there is nothing to identify the name of the site, or the type of server it is (best way I can describe it (.com or .ca or whatever...))
Anonymous

geekapproved said:
You must not have read it very cleary then.

First he said it wouldn't open, then he said it wouldn't eject media, hd's don't eject media or open.

Second he said he backed it up this morning, but he was afraid to format it because he would lose his data.....huh?

3rd he said he was unable to access the drive at all, yet he saved work to it....huh?

Then he used DC'd as an abbreviation of "disconnected", which sorry, I'm not a psychic text abbreviator.

I'll just back out of this thread and let the psychic friends network continue helping you.


Actually what he says makes perfect sense. Any USB external hard drive (hd) should be safely ejected before pulling the USB cable out so yes quite clearly you can and do dismount/eject the hard drive on conclusion of use in order to prevent corruption. This is done due to the fact that the external drive may be running background processes etc and to just pull the cable out whilst processes are running can and will sometimes corrupt the drive.

In this case he is quite clearly saying that unfortunately he didn't safely eject the hd and instead pulled the cable out and now unfortunately it won't open, therefore he can't open the work he'd just previously saved/backed up. Plain as day. No need to get arsey or short with someone who is clearly just trying to sort out their problems geekapprovec, you clearly don't know much about computers if you don't know about safely ejecting hds!
Anonymous

alohascott and sidmanny are definitely right in what they say, the best thing to do (other than trying it with another machine just in case it's your computer on the fritz and you'd be surprised how often doing that works) would be to attempt to recover the lost data. You can try doing this without formatting the drive first or if it still forces you down the road of having to then just use the quick format option. When you're about to try to recover the data, like alohascott and sidmanny said always make sure to recover the partition as well as the data.

Here's a link to a free program from Softpedia which is meant to be really good from what my colleagues have told me and from reading the site info': http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/MiniTool-Power...

Can't promise it will work but at least there's a chance now you can get it back.
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