I have a 5-year old WD My Book external HD connected to an HP Pavillion running Win7 SP1. About 4 months ago, the PC stopped recognizing the HD. Didn’t have any clue why. I haven’t had much time to trouble shoot the problem but I’m almost at an end now on what to do.
Just now, I tried accessing the HD (J drive). Got an error msg from Win7 saying “the volume does not contain a recognized file system. Pls make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.” Win7 also suggested the HD needed to be formatted.
At the suggestion another forum, I downloaded a program called TestDisk (runs under a DOS window). It seems to not have much problems with the HD. It detects the J drive as having a FAT32 partition and indicates the structure is OK. It seems to be able to read the top level folders (from what I remember); I’ve also checked some of the subfolders and they look fine too.
In fact, TestDisk allows you to copy a file from the disk you’re checking. It puts it in a subfolder with the same name as on the disk under test within the folder where TestDisk itself is located. I checked a few files (some txt and doc) files. Not only are the contents correct (from what I think they should be) but the file attributes seem ok too. For example, while within TestDisk, I copied a file which was a letter to my daughter in 1999. When I opened the copy of the file now copied to my Win7 HD in a subfolder under TestDisk’s folder, it looked fine.
So obviously, TestDisk is able to find the drive and read it. It’s Win7 that seems to be having trouble with it.
Suggestions?
Thanks.
Fred
BTW: A suggestion that would not be ok would be to use TestDisk to copy all the files from the WD HD. While TestDisk even allows me to select folders for copying and seems to correctly recreate them on my internal HD under the TestDisk folder, this would be too time consuming. I’m hoping to resurrect the WD HD itself.
I tried the techspot link you mentioned. Didn’t quite follow the order as listed there - I downloaded the drivecleanup zip before doing anything and moved the 64-bit version to the system32 folder before shutting down and disconnecting the USB drives (had 2 flash drives as well as the WD HD).
When I rebooted and ran drivecleanup, it looked like a bunch of things were being disconnected and keys being deleted. Looked good! I then reconnected just the WD HD, things looked even better - looked like new drives were being installed.
But when I went to access the WD HD, I got the same Win msgs as before: needs to be formatted (I canceled) and the volume does not contain a recognized file system and to make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.
Again, I was able to use testdisk to copy another file off the WD HD to my internal HD. So the data is still all there.
As to your second suggestion about deleting the driver, I did see from Windows Device Manager that there are 3 files associated with the WD HD. I guess I could rename the 3 files to be on the safe side and follow your suggestion. But I don’t see what that would do differently than what the techspot procedure did. The only thing that seems at all different is the step for deleting the driver(s): I could do it manually by renaming or really deleting the 3 files, which is what you seem to be suggesting, or let drivecleanup do it. But disconnecting the drives and rebooting and then reconnecting the drives and letting Windows load fresh drivers seems to be the same in your suggestion or the techspot procedure.
It’s been a long time since I dealt with Hard Disk internal tables. But it seems to me that there’s something fundamentally wrong or missing right at the top of the chain of accessing the data. Things like a Master Boot Record and a Partition table ring a bell. I base this on the fact that testdisk seems to have no trouble accessing the real data. So is there something that could be done to get the “up front” stuff working again? Windows does not think the volume is formatted but it certainly is, maybe just a little lower down than what Win is looking for. I also seem to recall a “quick format” option that only puts back the “high level” stuff but leaves the rest of the disk untouched. Maybe my memory is playing tricks. Would that do it? I certainly don’t want to lose all the data on the WD HD.
