Error message: format disk in drive g

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hello,

I’ve just turned my computer on this afternoon and it won’t read my WD external hard drive. Panic!!

It was fine this morning and now when i click on it in ‘my computer’ i get the message “you must format the disk in drive g: before you use it. Do you want to format it?”

No!!

It was working fine this morning and as far as i know nothing should have changed since then. Any ideas?

I would hate to lose everything…

Thanks for your help

2

That’s exactly what happened to me this morning, I’ve been searching for a solution, but for no avail.

I’m starting to become really preoccupied because I have important data on my HD.

Help would be most aprecciated!

3

If the drive Shows in Disk Management you can try TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk and see if it restores partition data.

Joe

4

Joe_S wrote:

If the drive Shows in Disk Management you can try TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk and see if it restores partition data.

Joe

Joe’s right.  You most likely pulled the plug before the drive’s cache got cleared.  That can corrupt data and the partition.  If the drive shows up in Disk Management, then you’ve corrupted the partition.  If the data is corrupted you won’t be able to restore it all, but if the partition was blown out, you might be able to restore it.  It’s data recovery software like TestDisk that you’ll need, that restores partitions, or recovers deleted files.

5

I can’t seem to understand how TestDisk really works, so far I haven’t been able to solve the problem…

TestDisk is analysing my HD but it hasn’t identified a partition yet, which is weird.

Btw, in Disc Management my HD is alright, it shows the full capacity of the disc and says it is healthy…