Drive recognised - but that's all

I made the mistake of connecting a portable HD to a mate's PC, which was infected. Now my drive shows up in 'My Computer', but when I try to format or recover the data, it comes up with 'please insert drive'. Same for Disk Manager.
What I need to do is 'force' a reformat, even though this will lose all my stuff. But at least I get my portable HD back.
Can any kind Geek steer me to where I need to go?

 

Do you know for sure it was a virus,have you cleaned any infection with AV software?If so do you know the name of the virus?

Try and run an anti virus software on the drive first and completely scan it AVG,avast are good and are available here at MG's.If you have already connected the drive to your home computer and it is a virus you may have already infected your home computer so follow these guides to check your both your computer and your friends computers are not infected,if you could ask your friend to scan his computer and isolate the virus this would be good also then we can work out if one the symptoms of the virus is disabling access to a volume.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=44525

The error can also be caused by duplicate drive letters so follow this guide

http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-fix-please-insert-a-disk-into-drive-error-in-windows/

The next step is to run manufacturers diagnostic software on the drive,without knowing what kind of drive or operating system you use I would just be guessing as to what else to try so post your OS and service pack,the make and model of the drive and any other spec's that are relevant.

 

Hi Ricky, thanks for all the good suggestions, but I'm afraid the problem continues - drive recognised, but media is not. My web search for possible damage to hardware from a virus rather leads me to think this is not possible, but my attempts at data recovery via Eraseus as well as reformatting have all come up dry.
I'm not sure that my OS could be playing a part, but for the record, I use a Dell GX520 Optiplex with XP Home/SP3/build 5.1.2600. I have scanned with Panda Cloud and Malwarebytes, but despite them finding nothing amiss, they also report zero files scanned - in other words, no media discovered.
Disk management also shows the drive as 'Z', changed as per your kind suggestion, but again, no media. As I said, I'm resigned to losing my files, just want some way of forcing a reformat to get the Tosh HD back. Incidentally it was new - here is a shot of it, if I can get it onto this page.
Again, Ricky, many thanks.

 

Can you post the make and model of the hard drive? If its in an external enclosure you will have to open it up.

Its no problem BTW

EDIT If you can take the hard drive out of the enclosure you can connect it directly to your DESKTOP computer if you have one using either IDE or SATA and use it just like an extra drive,this will also elminate the enclosure being faulty from the equation then try a format.

 

Hi again, Rikky. Well, I took the drive out of the metal case and ran it through the several USB ports on my Dell DX520 desktop, but same result unfortunately. I tried to attach a pic of my drive, but apparently it didn't make it, so here goes again.
As I said previously, this ext HD was working just fine until I connected to my mate's Dell laptop, which is when a pale blue screen advertising an antivirus program turned up. I forget the name, but you will be familiar with the evil rubbish that masquerade as antivirus cleaners demanding payment for clearing up the virus they themselves supply.
I really doubt it has anything to do with the Tosh drive, but here goes another shot at attaching a pic.
Again, Rikky, many thanks for your ongoing interest.

 

Unfortunately Toshiba don't make any diagnostic software tools which is just stupid,the closest thing is this Fujitsu
branded Toshiba drive diagnostic tool.

Download and give it a try.

http://sdd.toshiba.com/techdocs/fjdtwin.exe

From

http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=ServicesSupport/FujitsuDrives/SoftwareUtilities

Also run this as it should be able to test and diagnose the drive.

http://majorgeeks.com/Maxtor_Powermax_d1386.html

Find the option to do a surface scan,check smart data and check for bad sectors and post the results ,I've not used these two tools so I can't give you word for word instructions.

In the picture the HD is still in the enclosure using a USB interface,what I suggested was to remove the drive from that interface and connect it to your desktop using an IDE or SATA cable,you will also have to connect the drive to a power connector on your power supply.

Once you do this the drive should appear on your computer and you may be able to format it.

EDIT just check if you can right click the drive in my computer and scan it for errors,I doubt you can but if you can check the automatically fix errors box.

 

It could very well be the windows USB HD utility that's stopping the drive being recognised so do you have a windows disk or can you beg borrow or steal one from somewhere?

If so insert the windows disk and select boot from cdrom in your bios,in the windows setup screen see if the volume appears if it does format it with NTFS file system,a full format not a quick format.

 

Thanks again, Rikky. That's a really good suggestion. I'll give it a burst and let you know what happens.

 

Well, Rikky, I reckon you deserve the Victoria Cross for persistence, but sad to say, we remain glued to square one. The disk drive shows on MY COMPUTER and DISK MANAGER, but without media. Those Tosh test programs sadly did nothing and the Maxtor related to creation of a boot floppy, so also a no-go.
I guess this is the only case I have turned up where a virus has effectively buggered an item of hardware. I'll follow it up with Tosh Aust, but since Eraseus has also failed to find the media, I'm pretty sure the thing is shot.
But again, Rikky, thanks a million for a great try. This will remain a mystery.

 

Have you tried formatting it when not in a windows environment? Using a boot disk such as a floppy or using a windows disk is basically the same thing,you get access to files and basic tools without being tied down by the windows operating system.

 

Hi Rikky, Again thanks for your ideas, but I'm not savvy enough to work outside a Windows environment. I have just done what should have done as step one, which is to uninstall via Device Manager both the 'drive' and the 'USB storage device', but on rebooting, got the same result, which was 'please install disk'.
But one item which might be of interest is that the drive info in DM shows as 'Sunplus USB2SATA bridge USB device'.
Since I bought an external aluminium case as a housing for the poor old Tosh HD, could this be the damaged hardware and NOT the HD itself?

 

Yes that's the drive enclosure that converts the sata connector to USB.Is there a yellow exclamation mark next to it in device manager?If so what does the error code say,alternatively does it say the device is working properly in device manager? Right click the drive and hit properties,go to the driver tab post the info on the driver,who its from and the date,also post whether your enclosure came with a driver disk.

Without pulling the drive from the enclosure to rule out the enclosure or ruling out the OS there isn't much else I can recommend,we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...

 

Thanks, Rikky, we've done our best and come up dry. There's never been a yellow flag, just assurances that everything is ticketyboo. But the media just doesn't exist. I'm enough on this as I'm sure are you, so I'll try for a forced format and see what turns up. Again many thanks.

 

Ok,good luck