slave drive not formatted error!

my slave drive has quite a few folders on it (about 20) and for some strange reason a few of the folders dont respond when i double click on them to open them in explorer. what happens is explorer hangs for a minute then it comes up with a message telling me that the drive is not formatted, and asks do i wish to format it now?

well of course i dont cos i know it was formatted and ive been using it as a slave drive for over a year now, after its previous life and a master drive in my other pc. so why is my drive doing this? i ran chkdsk and it found errors on the drive, i asked chkdsk to fix errors but after that i still cant access those folders and i still get that message come up.

other folders on the drive are ok. is my drive on the way out or can i back it all up to the master drive, then format my slave and start again on it?

[acidtechno]

sounds like the hard drive could be dying/on the way out since you report errors were found.

I had the same problem you describe with a slave drive, and it was essential I saved the files because I had not backed them up anywhere else!

There is a very good program you can use called TestDisk, totally free, I used it and it got my drive working properly again so I could access the files.

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting your Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy

You could give the program a try, but make sure you read and know what you are doing.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

We learn from mistakes so it is best to keep files backed up if possible, keep the hard drive healthy, defragged and scanned for errors regularly.

a follow up note, I used TestDisk to fix my partion table on the drive last year which had somehow become corrupt or something, the program fixed my partition table and I was able to copy the files to a bigger hard drive, I think I lost a few files because they would not read from the disk, luckily they were not important. I formatted the drive (an 80gb which was in FAT32 still from my win98 days!) and now use it as a games hard drive in ntfs in win xp pro. Has since performed fine.

[kmount]

The worst thing you could do right now is try and write to the drive.

Go with what Acidtechno suggests, but I'd sooner get the data from it rather than try and make it work again.

[acidtechno]

yeah, he/she should copy whatever is able to be copied first to another drive and then try and make the drive accessible again, hopefully using TestDisk.

There's a lot of software out there to buy to recover lost files, but it can be a simple little tool like testdisk which is free which can save your life.

ok thanks for your replies, i will start copying what i can to c: drive and from there back it up onto dvd. i will give that testdisk app a go once iver copied everything over to c: drive and see how it goes. thanks for your help.

hi i have copied over about everything that i need. i was not able to understand how to use that testdisk app, i started it up and i didnt see any useful instructions for a non tech like me.
so now i have got all the data off the disc that i want, can i reformat it and use it as normal or what? i mean can i use it again or am i gonna have to go and buy another drive?
thanx

p.s i am male, just to stop the he/she replies lol

If it formats ok you can use it but it may not format if there are errors, i found that when using disk computer management under windows when i had a prob with a hdd it would get to the end and then say the disk could not be formatted, bit of a pain after so much time formatting.

ive formatted it and it formatted fully so hopefully it should be alright for use again. thanks for all the replies.

[acidtechno]

Originally Posted by luvvbuzz

p.s i am male, just to stop the he/she replies lol

cheers for the confirmation, I guess that got a bit annoying after a while, eh? apologies

You should do a full disk scan, to look for and recover bad sectors and fix errors - can take some time.

If you haven't then it might be a good idea to invest in a dvd writer so you can back up your files if required. USB flash drives are also very cheap and easy to use for backing up important files.

[AndyBites]

i'd strongly advise against using this drive day to day or for anything that would be an inconvenience if it suddenly failed - drives that develop errors tend to be on the way out.

Good brand (i.e. seagate) drives can be picked up at big capacities for reasonable prices now days - 160gb for a bit less than 40 quid is the going rate.

seems to be working ok for me the last few days. i wont put anything of great importants on it for a while as i want to see how relaible it is. besides, i think ive learnt my lesson to backup more frequently, i lost about a quarter of the mp3s on my slave drive through that error, about 15gb worth.

[acidtechno]

spam

unfortunately, in the past when hunting, I've had a hard time finding freeware recovery tools, can anyone make any suggestions?

[kmount]

The few I am aware of aren't for the feint hearted.

[acidtechno]

all command line maze like multi operation non gui user interfaced madness?

[aos101]

Spam post deleted, user banned, spamming attempt failed.

[AndyBites]

depends what you mean by data recovery - but if its a corrupt partition table or something of that ilk you could try something like this :
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

linked to it's wiki so you can have a good read.

those guys also have a piece of software called PhotoRec, supposed to be usefuly for recovering lost media even when the FAT has been totally trashed, never had cause to use that one though.

Hope that's some help, i do have a few other tools that i use on a live linux distro, but they're a bit mroe indepth- and generally you can get good mileage from testdisk.

cheers,

Andrew

[acidtechno]

cheers Andy, I know about and have used testdisk before, I mentioned and recommended it early in this topic

I used it before and it was extremely helpful.. I nearly lost data.

I loved the recent bbc article about hard disk recovery, which featured a very funny video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6677235.stm

without direct intention, gave some great tips on how to destroy your hard drive

[wfnuk]

I use a program called Handy Recovery and it's absolutely brilliant. Admittedly, it's not Freeware but then again, everything is relevant - how much is your potentially lost data worth to you? You can check it out here.

[acidtechno]

Originally Posted by wfnuk

I use a program called Handy Recovery and it's absolutely brilliant. Admittedly, it's not Freeware but then again, everything is relevant - how much is your potentially lost data worth to you? You can check it out here.

thanks for the rec, $39 works out at about £20, not bad for what it is, I've seen a lot of software similar that charge a lot more, it's hard to know what to go for.

for the opposite of recovering files, I found a freeware program that enables you to delete files forever so they become unrecoverable, useful if you plan on selling or giving away hard drives I suppose and for wiping private data you don't want anyone to find. File Shredder

I've yet to try it so cannot verify how good it is, sounds like it means business though.