URGENT HELP NEEDED...!!!

I have a problem with my Iomega External Hard Drive.
It keeps coming up as "Not Formatted"......

Now....if I format a SD Card.....I can sometimes use a Retrieval programme to find missing files / images.

Would this work on an External Hard Drive........

DONT WORRY, I'M NOT TOUCHING IT AT THE MO.....
This is for worse case ....etc..

Thanks

Those type of programmes usually work on all media including hard drives but if the drive is coming up as not formatted that would sound more like a problem with the boot sector in which case it probably wont work.

Worth a shot though, its not going to make it any worse.

If you don't have Acronis Disk Director already, have a go with the free trial:

http://www.acronis.co.uk/promo/ADD/disk-director-015.html/?source=uk_google&ad=a...

It has some tools that might help you recover data or fix the disk or copy partions to another disk.

It might be better to remove the HD from the case and put it in your computer as a slave drive and then run some diagnostics on it. Hopefully the fault may be in the enclosure and all your data will be safe.

I think there's a Bootable Linux CD available that will copy the drive over to another drive even if it's got errors using a built in Linux command. PC stuff like Drive Image won't copy a drive if it finds errors.

shim

This usually happens when you just unplug the drive from the pc (xp or vista) without the use of the option; Remove hardware safely.
It happened to me once, and the only cure was to format it again.
Lucky for me, I had a second external HD with all the data intact as a back-up.
I won't make that mistake twice.

Good luck,

Martin.

Find out what the actual drive is inside the case. If it's a Seagate SATA drive, check out Seagate's Knowledge Base article.

I have two affected drives in a NAS box and they don't get turned off very often and therefore not likely to be an immediate problem for me.

Seagate say the data is still intact when this occurs and they will help resolve it.

I've emailed them twice for updated firmware, no answer as yet.

Even if you do format it you can still get everything back, the software I have is called 'get data back', it does what it says

To one and all.....thank you ll for you advice and tips etc,....

Just to let you know,...the shop I took it to did a deep scan (11hrs) and have retrieved EVERYTHING....

Phew!

Everything is now backed up on DVD's....ha ha

Duncan,

good to hear that they were able to retrieve everything. That's a load of your shoulders, right?

Belts AND braces doesn't sound that silly anymore, does it?

Prieni