PC sez HDD needs to be formatted

I am referring to a Western Digital My Book.

I get this error message "drive needs to be formatted" when I connect the drive to the PC. The hdd doesn't show up in windows explorer.

I have seen reference to several programs that recover lost data such as Recuva and others.

How can any of these utilities work if the PC doesn't know there is an external hard drive connected? Will one of these see the hdd even though the PC doesn't know anything about it?

Richard
Win 7 x64

 

Which version of Windows are you running?
If you don't know then click on the Start button and type the following into the Search box:
winver
Press Enter.

Try this - Click the Start button and type the following into the Search box:
diskmgmt
Press Enter

Does the drive show up there?

And no, if you can't get Windows to see the drive then programs like Recuva will do you no good.

 

Also, what else, if anything, have you done with the external hard drive? Is it brand new and uninitialized? Have you repartitioned it or formatted it using some form of Linux?

 

Click on Computer then Manage, see if it shows there. If it does try assigning a drive letter, that has worked for me on a couple of USB drives.

 

Thanks for the replies. I have Windows 7 ver 6.01 SP1.

That HDD is partitioned. I have used it for a couple of years OK. The last time or two I tried to use it it had some difficulty with being recognized.

I know these things fail. Maybe it's just this one's time. I don't think anything I can't live without is on there- mostly some monthly backups. This is why I alternate two HDDS every other month.

Richard

 

Do you happen to have a Windows 7 Repair Disk? If you do then put it in the CD drive and reboot. The disk will walk you through some things you can do to fix various boot problems. If you don't have one, use another healthy computer that's running Windows 7 (a friend or family member perhaps) and make yourself a repair disk. You'll want one even if you decide to reinstall the OS.

To create a Windows 7 repair disk:

Open Control Panel
Double click on the Backup and Restore applet
Click on "Create a system repair disk"
Follow the prompts

Did you try clicking on the Start button and typing diskmgmt then pressing Enter to bring up the Disk Management window? Do that and see if the drive shows up there. If it does show up, tell us what the "File System" and "Status" show for that drive, and whether the drive has a drive letter assigned to it.

Yes, in all likelihood you have a failing disk on your hands but there's still a chance that you can repair it and avoid reinstalling long enough to recover your data.