Why am i asked to format hard drive

[Guest]

Hello, I have connected external hard drive it will not open and asks me to format the hard drive but I will lose the data I am trying to open

 

[Outlander_04]

the format compatible ?

was it from an apple or Linux device? and now its connected to a windows computer?

 

[beefybish]

It's probably because it's in the wrong format. Depending on the hard drive's size, If you are using Windows it will probably want you to reformat the drive into NTFS

 

[nekulturny]

What format is it in now? Do you know?

If you have data on it you want to retrieve, you absolutely do not want to format it.