We have several (at least 6) G drives in our office. All of them are 6 TB. So far 3 of them have failed with the above message after very limited hours of usage. They were all formatted for Windows. We are using Windows 10. They were not dropped, unplugged improperly and always properly ejected.
After I click Cancel, the following appears:
E:\ is not accessible.
The volume does not contain a recognized file system.
Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.
I’m not sure if you work for G Tech/WD or are just trying to lend a hand. Thank you for your effort nonetheless.
All of what you listed and items from the link you sent were already addressed and tried.
We now stand at 4 bad drives, 2 of which didn’t have more than 40 hours on them. To say we are disappointed with G drives would the understatement of the year. We have lost all confidence in our G drives and we have 8 of them. All with very important data and since we were using other G Drives to back our G Drives up, some of the data might be gone forever.
At this point I believe either the electronics in the back of the G Drive or the Windows formatting software is behind the issues we are having. I have opened one of the failed drives up (it actually failed twice after a reformatting) and directly installed it into my tower to test the actual HDD (yes I know I have voided the warranty on that particular G drive). I formatted it with Windows so we will see what happens.
With that being said, as the person in our office that is responsible for ordering I won’t be ordering other G drives and upon discovering there is a WD Ultrastar inside, I question my long standing confidence in WD.
I’m actually dealing with an issue of a brand new G-Drive USB that I was using with HFS+ for Windows by Paragon. The software G-Technology has on their website to use with PCs. I recently updated windows and now I’m getting this same message where it is telling me to format the drive. I took it to my office to see if it would mount on a Mac and it does not. I can see it through disk utility but can’t see it in finder window. Trying to run recovery on it at the moment. Severely disappointed in seeing issues like these on brand new drives.
I found generic USB boxes with a disk stuffed in them to be more reliable than proprietary solutions, box dies they are cheap to replace, I use server disks, hard to kill
When Windows reports that a volume doesn’t contain a recognized file system, it usually means that the file system (NTFS or exFAT) has become corrupted or unreadable. This can happen even if the drives weren’t dropped or mishandled — sometimes it’s caused by a sudden power loss, hidden hardware failure, a faulty enclosure, or even issues with USB controllers.
After seeing this error, it’s important not to format the drive immediately if you want to recover your data. Instead, you should try opening Disk Management (press Win + R, type diskmgmt.msc) and check how the drive appears there. If the file system is listed as RAW or if the partition shows as unallocated, that confirms corruption. At that point, your best course of action is to use a reliable data recovery tool.
However, if the drive does not appear at all in Disk Management — not even as an uninitialized or raw volume — that could indicate a hardware-level issue, possibly with the drive’s enclosure, circuit board, or internal components. In such cases, I strongly recommend not attempting further DIY solutions, and instead contacting a professional data recovery service.
The error “The volume does not contain a recognized file system” means a file system corruption, which is mainly caused by issues like unsafe removal, driver failure, or a failing drive.
Check the disc health, and assign a drive letter with Disk Management. You can use tools like CrystalDiskInfo or GSmartControl to check the health. Otherwise, since the file system is likely corrupted, avoid formatting or running CHKDSK before trying to recover your files.
