I have one of these and it's has been great however I have a problem. Whilst it was writing the other day I unplugged it by mistake and now my PC can see it (drive G:) after several minutes of searching but it can't view the contents. I get an I/O device error message, any ideas as it's a 250GB drive with more than 150GB of stuff on it that I need to access.

Cheers

Steve

No body able to shed light?!

Looks like it's managed to corrupt the file system.

Does it show up under the drive manager?

What file system are you using? FAT32 or NTFS?

As Stu said, what file system? You should be able to recover the files with some restore software. I may be able to help you out if you PM me

I think it was on FAT32 but can't be certain! Drive manager? It shows on my computer but won't display contents etc, in some circumstances it Autoplays when it's turned on but that's as far as it gets

Any help would be much appreciated!

Sounds like the FAT has gone west, which O/S are you using? XP?.

Sounds like the FAT has gone west, which O/S are you using? XP?.

XP Home Ed

Sounds like the FAT has gone west?.

Wish my "FAT" would!!

OK, so it looks like I maybe able to get the data etc of the drive (just need to get something big enough to store it onto!), how do I get this drive back up and running after I've done that?!

OK, so it looks like I maybe able to get the data etc of the drive (just need to get something big enough to store it onto!), how do I get this drive back up and running after I've done that?!

If it's just the FAT that's gone belly-up, you should be able to just reformat it and it will work as good as new.

You will lose all contents on the disk doing this, but if you can get what you need off first then that shouldn't be a problem...

Rob.

Have you tried running chkdsk on the drive?, drop to a command prompt and type chkdsk driveletter: or right click on drive select properties, then tools, then error checking. Now put a tick in the box for check for filesystem errors then click ok. If prompted reboot your pc.

If your data is really important you could try a program called spinrite.....its a superb program similar to the old MS Scandisk....they say they can recover data from disks that have been magnetically corrupted.

hers a link to the website

http://grc.com/spinrite.htm

Keith

Ok, so I have managed to get most the stuff of it using EasyRecovery, I need to re-format it now.

Can't see the drive in Windows to be able to do this and in dos typing format g: gives me the following

The drive is FAT32

Verifying 239966M

The volume is too big for FAT 32

What can I do?!

If you do:

format /FS:NTFS g:

then it should format it in NTFS fine.

If you want to keep it FAT32, you could use fdisk to split it down into 2 drives and format each as FAT32...

Rob.

If you do:

format /FS:NTFS g:

then it should format it in NTFS fine.

If you want to keep it FAT32' date=' you could use fdisk to split it down into 2 drives and format each as FAT32...

Rob.[/quote']

Thanks for the help Rob

No probs with changing to NFTS, however when i use the above prompt i get "Format is not available for NFTS drives"

Ah...any idea of the version of DOS you're booting in to? The version of format that's available might not support NTFS...

Rob.

Ah...any idea of the version of DOS you're booting in to? The version of format that's available might not support NTFS...

Rob.

Running XP home, just typing cmd into the run box, is that wrong! (I'm not very technically minded when it comes to this stuff!)

Cheers

Steve

Running XP home' date=' just typing cmd into the run box, is that wrong! (I'm not very technically minded when it comes to this stuff!)

Cheers

Steve[/quote']

Any further help would be much appreciated as I'm no further on with this :(

If all else fails you could try taking the actual drive out of the case and installing it straight into the computer with an IDE lead.

This will get rid of the interface between the PC and the drive caddy.

Good luck, been there.

Any further help would be much appreciated as I'm no further on with this :(

you should be able to see it in disk management and format it from there, just right click my computer go to manage.

if it is already fat32 then you can convert it from the cmd prompt

convert x: /fs:ntfs

where "X:" is the drive letter (maxtor) you want to convert to NTFS,

Thanks for the help Rob

No probs with changing to NFTS' date=' however when i use the above prompt i get "Format is not available for NFTS drives"[/quote']

you could drop /x onto Rob's string, it will force it to dismount before formatting it