Question about Maxtor external HD's

**DirtyTaco** · November 30th, 2004, 12:41 PM

I've had a 40 gig maxtor external HD for about 2 months now. My internal HD just crashed and i had to format, but luckily i have most of the files i need backed up on my external. After formatting my internal, i updated windows completely to sp2 and all, but when i plug in my external it says the usual 'device is installed and ready for use' or what have you and then when i go to click on my external in 'My Computer' it asks me to format it even though it has been formatted and has alot of important data in it. If anyone has any idea how to fix this please respond I would be VERY grateful. Thank you for you time

**DirtyTaco** · November 30th, 2004, 02:17 PM

Originally Posted by freddy

did u reformat and installl as fat32 ? , if the external maxtor is ntfs ,,it wont see it?

double click on my computer and go to drive c properties ,,see if its fat32 or ntfs

drive c: is formatted as NTFS and for the external it says RAW

The external was plugged into the computer through the whole formatting process, but i doubt this had an effect on it.

One of my friends suggested that possibly all the data on the external is flagged for deletion or something, but i really dont know.

**DirtyTaco** · November 30th, 2004, 03:22 PM

Also, when i try to access it through to command console i get this:

The volume does not contain a recognized file system.
Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the v
olume is not corrupted.

I tried opening it in partition magic, and it shows the drive as unformatted... i mean i recently formatted this drive and put data on it about 2 weeks ago, and even used it like 2 days before this happened to get data on and off of it on a different computer... this just doesnt make any sense why it would suddenly be corrupted

**The_Silent_One_1** · December 17th, 2004, 05:48 PM

Originally Posted by DirtyTaco

Also, when i try to access it through to command console i get this:

The volume does not contain a recognized file system.
Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the v
olume is not corrupted.

I tried opening it in partition magic, and it shows the drive as unformatted... i mean i recently formatted this drive and put data on it about 2 weeks ago, and even used it like 2 days before this happened to get data on and off of it on a different computer... this just doesnt make any sense why it would suddenly be corrupted

Did you copy files across straight or did you back them up using an imaging or backup program?