External hard drive problem

J

JimRobbins

I backed up all my files on an external drive so that I could wipe my main
drive clean after getting a bitchy virus. When I tried to restore the files
to my drive, a window pops up telling that I have to reformat the external
drive. This after loading about 25% of the contents to my main drive.

I can't access the external drive at all unless I reformat it. Will I lose
all my backed up data?

Can this data be recovered after doing a reformat on that drive? Does it
require special software? What is the name of the software needed to recover
the data?

Help! There's about 70 gigs of files, programs, etc on that drive. If I lose
that, I lose a heluva lot of work, etc.
 
P

philo

JimRobbins said:
I backed up all my files on an external drive so that I could wipe my main
drive clean after getting a bitchy virus. When I tried to restore the files
to my drive, a window pops up telling that I have to reformat the external
drive. This after loading about 25% of the contents to my main drive.

I can't access the external drive at all unless I reformat it. Will I lose
all my backed up data?

Can this data be recovered after doing a reformat on that drive? Does it
require special software? What is the name of the software needed to recover
the data?

Help! There's about 70 gigs of files, programs, etc on that drive. If I lose
that, I lose a heluva lot of work, etc.


DO NOT format the drive
you will loose your data.

If you are real lucky it may be a problem with the USB interface
in your external drive

You may want to remove it and install it internally to see if you can
retrieve your data.

If not, you will need some data recovery software...
but whatever you do DO NOT format the drive!!!!
 
U

Umapathy (உமாபதி)

Better not to format the drive.

There is a data recovery utility named recuva (http://www.recuva.com/) works
fine. That can even recover the files from a formatted drive.

But I still suggest not to format the drive. If you have exhausted all other
options try to format the drive as the last option.
 
K

kevinsteve23

I backed up all my files on an external drive so that I could wipe my main
drive clean after getting a bitchy virus. When I tried to restore the files
to my drive, a window pops up telling that I have to reformat the external
drive. This after loading about 25% of the contents to my main drive.

I can't access the external drive at all unless I reformat it. Will I lose
all my backed up data?

Can this data be recovered after doing a reformat on that drive? Does it
require special software? What is the name of the software needed to recover
the data?

Help! There's about 70 gigs of files, programs, etc on that drive. If I lose
that, I lose a heluva lot of work, etc.

Do not format your eternal drive. Try out Stellar Phoenix Windows data
recovery to recover your inaccessible data. The software GUI interface
makes it very easy to use and provides complete recovery solution. Its
demo version is free in which you can see the preview of your
recoverable data. Once you see the preview go for full version to
complete your recovery.
http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm
 
P

philo

Umapathy (??????) said:
Better not to format the drive.

There is a data recovery utility named recuva (http://www.recuva.com/) works
fine. That can even recover the files from a formatted drive.

But I still suggest not to format the drive. If you have exhausted all other
options try to format the drive as the last option.


No

the OP should *not* format the drive under any circumstances until the data
are recovered
 

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