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Technical Help & Discussion => General Tech Discussion, News & Q&A => Topic started by: TOFFEEMAN1878 on June 11, 2006, 13:22

Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: TOFFEEMAN1878 on June 11, 2006, 13:22: I can't access my external HD keepgetting the message
File corrupted or inaccessable !!!..........Jim
Any help would be appreciated ,Thanks in Advance !
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: Sandra on June 11, 2006, 17:23: Is it USB or firewire and have you tried it in a different port ?

Have you tried rebooting while its connected ?
Title: External H/D
Post by: TOFFEEMAN1878 on June 11, 2006, 19:44: Hi,Sandra it's USB tried all USB connections to no avail ,tried shutting down PC & rebooting but no Joy !!
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: Sandra on June 12, 2006, 00:06: Is it showing in the device manager at all ?

If you connect it after the pc has booted does it come up as new found hardware and then say its installed and ready for use ?

Have you tried it on a different pc ?

Can you hear the drive spinning up ?

Sorry that I only have questions at the moment :(
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: TOFFEEMAN1878 on June 22, 2006, 12:22: Sandra, Sorry I'm only just getting back to you ,in answer to your questions
1 yes
2 No
3 Yes
4 Yes
btw the message reads : F/: Is not Accessable
the file or directory is coruppted or unreadable
Lights show on the HD
pwr Red/ USB mode yellow /R/W no light ,should be a green one

It's looking like I may have to bin it !!......Jim
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: Sandra on June 22, 2006, 12:58: It sounds like you need to format it but as its not being recognised via usb you will have to remove the drive from the housing and connect it as a slave inside your pc.

It may see it in normal windows if its connected as a slave and enable you to recover some data from it, if you have anything important on it.

You may have to format it in safe mode or even boot from a floppy, but I would have it as a single master in that case (booting from a floppy) so that you dont accidentally format your main drive by mistake.
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: TOFFEEMAN1878 on June 22, 2006, 13:37: Strange Sandra , I coulkd not access it ,but was able to format it which was not an option last week ,Idon't understand that ,still thanks for your help ....Jim
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: Sandra on June 22, 2006, 14:46: I had one that a friend had a similar problem with a few months back.
I was trying to get it recognised to save his data but was having no luck.
The following day he rang me to say that hed actually got al the data he really needed backed up elsewhere and it was ok to format it.
It formatted ok and worked fine after that.

I think that with external USB drives they sometimes get too full and screw up for some reason.
I think if they get to around 10% of their mazimum capcity then it somehow affects the file structure, so ever since then I try and keep my drives as a temporary storage and transfer whats needed to cds or dvds, just in case.
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: TOFFEEMAN1878 on June 23, 2006, 12:40: The worrying thing isI only had about 300 pics on a 250gb HD ,so capacity would not have been the problem I think one of my darling nephews or nieces downloaded something from Limewire which of corouse they all deny !!
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: Sandra on June 23, 2006, 12:48: Thatd do it :roll:

Limewire seems to have taken over from Kazaa as being a pcs public enemy No.1 :(
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: sam on June 23, 2006, 13:34: indeed!
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: Simon on June 23, 2006, 16:51: IT'S NOT LIMEWIRE ITSELF - IT'S WHAT YOU DOWNLOAD FROM IT!!! The whole P2P network is rife with viruses at the moment, and it doesn't just affect Limewire, as many other applications use the same networks. However, if the Limewire developers could do something about this, it might rid them of the bad name they are increasingly being given, by allowing these viruses to pollute the networks so prevalently.

If you download Limewire itself from a safe location, i.e. www.limewire.com (http://www.limewire.com), you shouldn't get any spyware bundled in with the download, then make it a practice to virus scan everything downloaded, and you shouldn't have any problems. Of course, Limewire Pro (the paid for version) can be downloaded 'free' from other locations, but this is not guaranteed to be clean of nasties.
Title: Is there any way I can fix a corrupted external HD?
Post by: Reno on June 25, 2006, 05:01: If its showing up as a usb device in device manager you can go to control panel/ Administrative Tools/ computer managment and then look at the disk managment. If its in that list of particians the system sees then you can right click on the usb disk partician and delete the old partician, repartician, and reformat, there.

If its not in that list you can use your windows xp cd to repartician it using its particianing wizard. Thats what i did about 2 weeks ago with a little jumpdrive keychain. Accidently deleted the partician and had to use the windows xp cd to put a new one on there. Inside windows it wouldn't repartician with a raw disk.

Good luck.