Need help to reformat an external hard drive?

Sirius_87

Honorable
Dec 16, 2012
4
0
10,510
Hi, I wonder if this is actually doable.

I was transferring data to my hard drive, and then at one point it froze. I unplugged it and since then, it won't boot.

Well, the first time, it asked me if I wanted to reformat it. I said no. Since then though, it just won't show up. So now I want to format it and give up on my files, but I can't even seem to be able to do that either.

I have Windows Vista.
It's a Buffalo 2TB Hard Drive. The computer sees the drive. In disk manager, it appears. I tried initializing it, but it gives me a Cyclic Redundancy Check error.
I tried the chkdsk thing, it says cannot open volume for direct access.

The drive powers up and when I connect the USB cable, you can hear it turn inside a little. Then it stops. The light stays on, the computer says the "HD is functioning properly", but it won't appear as an icon anymore.

Anything I can do?
Thanks in advance.
 
Did you try hooking it up to another computer?

Off hand it sounds like your external hard drive failed. If it had failed while os is trying to write data it can cause computer to look frozen. The hard drive should stay spun up at least a few mins before powering down for power saving. if its cutting off immediately something has failed (could be the interface board not the actual hard drive its self, the board that converts usb,ect to sata for the hard drive.) no easy way to know for sure