external hard drive in mid-process not recognized

My 250GB external hard drive just all of a sudden stopped being recognized by my laptop while in use. There were no power surges and the hard drive was not overheating. The hard drive is externally powered and in an aluminum case. The drive has never been dropped and I keep good care of it.

When I turn on the hard drive it loads up as normal, making no strange noises and when I plug it into my computer (and my roommate's), the computer beeps and tries to load the drive as usual (using Autoplay), but doesn't sort through the files. When I go into My Computer it shows the drive, but not with the name I've given it, just Drive F. And when I click on the drive, after a few times of it trying to read the drive it pops up a screen that says the drive isn't formatted and asks if I want to format. Naturally I do not.

It shows the drive in the system tray and I have to eject the drive before I remove it.

Can you help me? I have no idea what to do and how it happened. I was burning a disc from some files off the drive and in the middle of the process it hung up and then this started.

 

Try a different USB lead..

 

you might want to run a scan to check it for errors.

you can right click the drive, then select properties. under the tools tab select check now, under error checking (this is for xp)

 

Hey, i have the same problem dude....even my External hard drive which is a Buffalo MiniStation 250 GB isnt being recognized by my system all of a sudden ! !! Says Local Disk F is not readable. :confused

• Only Malwarebytes is able to scan it and it shows no malware.
• I have also tried System Restore, but it says changes done to F cannot be undone !:cry

I have got many imp files in it. Please help me too !!rolleyes

 

I have tried my 4gb Pen drive that is being recognized and s perfectly fine....
But iam unable to know why my system is notable to recognize this drive. Please help me out !!!:cry

 

Go to Cntrl Panel/Admin Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management and if the HD is showing right click on the large area and choose ''Explore'' if you can access it I suggest you move all data. If not right Click on the small area where it says Disk ?(number) and size choose Properties/Driver/Uninstall then reboot.

 

I tried a different USB lead and that didn't work. I tried right-clicking on the drive, but nothing happens. And I tried going into disk management and it shows the drive as completely empty and when I click on the large area it asks to format the drive. I have no idea what could have happened.

 

Go to Disk Management/Hihjlight Large area/Porperties(symbol top of page)Tools/Error Checking and run. Can you borrow another USB HD using the same lead and see what happens . How old and what make is the HD. What OS are you using ? Also go into your BIOS/CMOS settings if all else fails ( with your HD connected) and drop the voltage down on the USB Port. This will obviously slow the port down but it may recognise it on reboot.

 

Thanks for all the replies. I tried doing all the suggestions, but nothing worked. I then took it to my IT guys at work who tried running several recovery programs, also to no avail. And then, one day, after leaving the hard drive on and shutting down the computer, the hard drive just popped back into existence when the computer was turned back on. We have no idea why for 2 weeks the hard drive didn't work and computers didn't recognize.

In any case, I appreciate all the advice. Major Geeks is always my first resort.

 

i would definitely not trust that drive anymore, you should copy anything from it a trash it.

 

Yup, bought a new one and am waiting for it to get to my doorstep for the transfer.