Do not want to reformat external hard drive

[filmdrew]

My external hard drive has just decided to stop being viewed on my
computer as EXTERNAL and is now viewed as "Local Disc" and when I click
on it to view the contents, a pop up tells me it has not been formatted
and that I need to format the drive. Does anyone know what might be
causing it, and how I can solve it? Thank you.

-Andrew

 

[Shenan Stanley]

My external hard drive has just decided to stop being viewed on my
computer as EXTERNAL and is now viewed as "Local Disc" and when I
click on it to view the contents, a pop up tells me it has not been
formatted and that I need to format the drive. Does anyone know
what might be causing it, and how I can solve it? Thank you.

If you plug it into a different computer - how does it react?

If okay - you may want to get stuff off, format it, put stuff back on and
move on instead of putting too much time/effort into it. =)

 

[Guest]

you have run scan disk on it? often? disk defrag ?when you run scan disk make
sure it says E drive not C drive.

 

[filmdrew]

i have tried runnning a few different defragging and virus scans,
unfortunately they wont run on the external drive because it just cant
read it, and some of them said "cannon read F drive".