External 3.5" drive disk not formatted error

JLamyJLamy UK
edited October 2005 in Hardware
Hi people, would like some hard disk help please.

HDD in question: External drive enclosure with Oxford and Cypress chipset, fitted with Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10: 300GB drive.
O/S: Windows 2000 Pro and XP

Windows stopped recognizing the data on the disk suddenly from no apparent reason. Last time I used it when it was working, I had set a timer recording for video using AVI_IO, then used a program to shutdown the machine at a time long after the recording time had ended. Prior to this, I could access the drive and the data without any issues. Its connected to machine via FireWire.

At present, when I try to access the disk/drive, I get the message "Disk in drive E: is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?". Windows "Disk Management" under "Storage" of the "Computer Management" tool in control panel reports the drive to be healthy and with the RAW file system, where it should read NTFS. The data on the disk is really important! Please help!

Thank you.

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited June 2005
    Have you tried unpliggin/re-plugging it in? It may be a simple enough case of just having to re-detect it.

    If not you may have to get disk tools to test the drive and make sure it's ok. I forget the name of them at the moment but I'll go searching for it later.
  • JLamyJLamy UK
    edited June 2005
    kryyst wrote:
    Have you tried unpliggin/re-plugging it in? It may be a simple enough case of just having to re-detect it.

    If not you may have to get disk tools to test the drive and make sure it's ok. I forget the name of them at the moment but I'll go searching for it later.
    Yes, I have tried turning off the drive enclosure, waiting one minute, then back on again. The disk will appear in 'My Computer', normally Windows XP will ask what I want to do with the data on the HDD its just detected, but now it doesn't at all meaning it cannot see anything on the HD. So, Windows does detect the drive, but cant access the data on it cos it sees the contents as RAW instead of NTFS - how the hell can it do that!!!???

    I looked on Maxtor site, they have a utility called PowerMax v4.21 which may help, but do I have to move the drive from the external enclosure and connect it to a internal IDE socket for this program to work? If you know of another bettter utility please let me know.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited June 2005
    JLamy wrote:
    I looked on Maxtor site, they have a utility called PowerMax v4.21 which may help, but do I have to move the drive from the external enclosure and connect it to a internal IDE socket for this program to work? If you know of another bettter utility please let me know.


    I don't know if you have to put it on an idea channel for that program to work, but that was going to be my next suggestion.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited June 2005
    try cleaning the filesystem. Its fairly common with many external drives to simply corrupt the FS when you power the computer off.

    Tex
  • HawkHawk Fla Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    If all else fails, you can try running Unstoppable Copier .
    It has options for repairing the drive. I'm not sure if it will work with firewire though. You'll have to try it.
    I had a drive that gave me the same problem and this program fixed it and I'm still using the drive after 5 mnths or so, without having to reformat.
    Hope this helps. Let us know.
  • JLamyJLamy UK
    edited October 2005
    Tex:
    Can't clean the filesystem as all disk utilities I've tried just tell me that the hard disk is not formatted.

    Hawk:
    Unstoppable Copier doesn't recovery anything for me. It justs says "DONE" the moment I click on the Recover button.

    kryyst:
    I plugged the disk into IDE socket, ran the PowerMax v4.21 thing, its passed diagnostic test. I not had time to turn the deep scan, but it passed the basic test.

    ANYONE have any more ideas?
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2005
    With it still on the ide channel boot up into windows and see what you can see. If there is data on it that you need to keep back it up then repartition and format the drive. If you only are using it for this computer (or any other NT based machine) it's ok to format it NTFS other wise format it fat32 but you may not be able to access the full drive and have file size caps as well.

    Then power down put it back in the enclosure and should be fine.
  • JLamyJLamy UK
    edited October 2005
    kryyst wrote:
    With it still on the ide channel boot up into windows and see what you can see. If there is data on it that you need to keep back it up then repartition and format the drive. If you only are using it for this computer (or any other NT based machine) it's ok to format it NTFS other wise format it fat32 but you may not be able to access the full drive and have file size caps as well.

    Then power down put it back in the enclosure and should be fine.

    As I said before - Windows doesn't see anything on the drive as it thinks its unformatted. Every time I double click the icon for the HD, I get the pop up message "This drive is not formatted. Do you want to format now?" YES / NO. So I can't back anything up! Having said that, If I did a quick format using NTFS, do you think the data will be recoverable via data recovery programs? Or will the process of quick format wipe the MBR, thus preventing any recovery software from seeing deleted files.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2005
    JLamy wrote:
    As I said before - Windows doesn't see anything on the drive as it thinks its unformatted. Every time I double click the icon for the HD, I get the pop up message "This drive is not formatted. Do you want to format now?" YES / NO. So I can't back anything up! Having said that, If I did a quick format using NTFS, do you think the data will be recoverable via data recovery programs? Or will the process of quick format wipe the MBR, thus preventing any recovery software from seeing deleted files.


    Sorry missunderstood. I thought when you said you couldn't read the device it was still hooked up via usb.

    So with it hooked up via IDE use drive recovery software on it in it's current state and see if it'll read it. If you do a quck format on it there are no guarantees one way or another if recovery software will read it.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited October 2005
    JLamy wrote:
    Having said that, If I did a quick format using NTFS, do you think the data will be recoverable via data recovery programs?

    data recovery programs do not need this to be done. just run them! Or send it to me and I will do it for you.

    Tex
  • JLamyJLamy UK
    edited October 2005
    Tex wrote:
    data recovery programs do not need this to be done. just run them! Or send it to me and I will do it for you.

    Tex
    Cool. Can you suggest some software that I can use for this purpose?
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