I am running Windows XP. While doing an automatic windows update I got an error window that said something about my J: folder ran out of room to write temp files please specify a new location. I tried to click into the window or look for some where to access it and the computer rebooted. I went to the microsoft updates page and it said my updates failed so I picked them again and they installed. I went on working on something and needed a file off my J external drive and it was not in the pick. I did an explore window and it wasn’t listed. I shut everything down and rebooted and it did not connect. I shut everything down and unpluged the drive and rebooted and after everything was running I plugged it back in and nothing. the drive spools up and the light on the front is on steady but I do not see anywhere that shows J: drive anymore. I went to microsoft support and he had me restore my windows back before the update and try that but so far that did not work.
I read something about update looking for the largest space to write temp files to and fear it may have used my external for that during the crash and now my hard drive thinks it is a file instead of a drive.
Anything to try? All my data is on that drive and I don’t want to reformat it. I will take it to a data recovery place if I have to, I would rather buy a new drive than loose all of that data. Any help will be appreciated
If the Drive is not listed under my computer May be the windows update has give a diffrent drive letter to the drive
which is same refelcting with the other drives or the CD ROMS
Please try getting into the disk management under Computer management you can try changing the drive letter to this Particular WD External drive which shows 931 GB
You may try connecting the drive to a different computer, I suspect that the file system on the drive Might have been corrupted. Try using Raw recovery software to recover your data and the software can be found on google for free of cost. Before you try data recovery software make sure that the drive is seen in Device manager and disk management.
You may also try the DLG diagnostic software and check if that reads the drive, if it reads the drive then you can definitely use data recovery software to recover your data.
It is too bad you can’t prove that it was microsoft update that did it.
Any way I took it to a data recovery place and they are getting the data they can off of it at a pretty high cost, but I already lost a lot of data due to a virus earlier. I guess they were having problems with formatting it so it looks like I will also have to purchace a new external. These pictures are certainly getting expensive.
