HELP.....External drive error says "drive needs to be formatted"

[RWhite]

I can't find anything to suggest that an internal drive is physically different from an external drive, but who knows, maybe it is.

Either way, seems you've been unlucky, Op.

There is absolutely no difference at all between "external" and "internal" drives. I always recommend that people buy an external case and then put their own hard drive in it. Some of the external drives that you buy have cases that are permanently sealed shut. They do this for only one reason - so that when the drive fails you have to buy a new case as well.
All modern hard drives will auto-park their heads when they power off. So long as you are gentle with them, and wait until they are COMPLETELY off before you pick them up (I say wait at least 10 seconds), then you should have no problems. However all drives do eventually fail, and sometimes it can seem quite random.

 

[RWhite]

The thing is that I took a drive out of a desktop about 3 years ago to use in an external enclosure, use it all of the time, and haven't had a bit of trouble out of it. I guess I just got lucky.

Funny thing is that my laptop won't recognize the drive using eSATA, but will recognize it using USB. It still says I need to format it, but at least it recognizes it using USB.

That is not unusual. Your USB interface sends information to your computer, and the most basic message is "I have a hard drive plugged into me". So even an otherwise defective hard drive will still send this message, but your interface will not be able to read or format or do anything with the drive.

 

[witzendoz]

I know this will sound funny, but one of my old crap laptops sometimes comes up with the "Insert disc, operating system not found" message. What I discovered is that because it travels around under the seat of the car all its life going to gigs sometimes the hard drive sticks, or rather the reading arm inside the drive sticks. Maybe it's the vibration or something in the car. Anyway I found if I give the laptop a couple of sharp knocks (with my knuckles) where the drive is it will spring into life. I mentioned this as when it's not working it makes a clicking sound, and after the knocks the clicking stops and all is well.

I know it's not a technical answer but who knows? It's a bit like the one where I put a stuffed hard drive in the freezer and managed to recover 80% of the data.... But that's another story.

Alan.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Thanks for the info Rwhite.

 

[somegeezer]

I know this will sound funny, but one of my old crap laptops sometimes comes up with the "Insert disc, operating system not found" message. What I discovered is that because it travels around under the seat of the car all its life going to gigs sometimes the hard drive sticks, or rather the reading arm inside the drive sticks. Maybe it's the vibration or something in the car. Anyway I found if I give the laptop a couple of sharp knocks (with my knuckles) where the drive is it will spring into life. I mentioned this as when it's not working it makes a clicking sound, and after the knocks the clicking stops and all is well.

I know it's not a technical answer but who knows? It's a bit like the one where I put a stuffed hard drive in the freezer and managed to recover 80% of the data.... But that's another story.

Alan.

"When all else fails, just hit it with a hammer."

 

[RWhite]

I know it's not a technical answer but who knows? It's a bit like the one where I put a stuffed hard drive in the freezer and managed to recover 80% of the data.... But that's another story.

Alan.

Yup, that's "the freezer trick" which I didn't really want to get into, but which has worked for me a number of times. I didn't believe it when I first heard about it, but it can be a life saver. You will need a second functioning computer to try this. Here's the short version:

If your drive is suffering from "the click of death", and you have tried everything else but can't get it to work, and if you have some REALLY important data to recover, wrap the drive up in an anti-static bag and put it in the freezer over night. Then get your second PC ready to accept a data drive, either by opening it up and setting up a space & data cable or by setting up an external USB connection. Time is a factor in this, and it will only work ONCE (if it works at all), so you need everything to be ready.

Then when you are set pull the drive out of the freezer, hook it up, and fire up the PC. If you are lucky you will be able to read your rapidly-thawing drive for a short time. What happens is that when the drive freezes the reading arm contracts and it may move back into the correct position for a short time, allowing the drive to work. But as soon as the drive heats up enough - usually a few minutes - it will fail again. And I've never heard of this trick working twice. Over my career I've tried it about 6 times, and was able to recover at least some data from 3 drives.

So if all else fails you can try this as a last resort. While I'm sure it would technically void a hard drive warranty, I'm not sure anyone would be able to tell it had been done.

 

[Lt. Bob]

Yup, that's "the freezer trick" which I didn't really want to get into, but which has worked for me a number of times. I didn't believe it when I first heard about it, but it can be a life saver. You will need a second functioning computer to try this. Here's the short version:

If your drive is suffering from "the click of death", and you have tried everything else but can't get it to work, and if you have some REALLY important data to recover, wrap the drive up in an anti-static bag and put it in the freezer over night. Then get your second PC ready to accept a data drive, either by opening it up and setting up a space & data cable or by setting up an external USB connection. Time is a factor in this, and it will only work ONCE (if it works at all), so you need everything to be ready.

Then when you are set pull the drive out of the freezer, hook it up, and fire up the PC. If you are lucky you will be able to read your rapidly-thawing drive for a short time. What happens is that when the drive freezes the reading arm contracts and it may move back into the correct position for a short time, allowing the drive to work. But as soon as the drive heats up enough - usually a few minutes - it will fail again. And I've never heard of this trick working twice. Over my career I've tried it about 6 times, and was able to recover at least some data from 3 drives.

So if all else fails you can try this as a last resort. While I'm sure it would technically void a hard drive warranty, I'm not sure anyone would be able to tell it had been done.

interesting.
So what if you leave it in the freezer and just run a cord to it?
That'd give you more time. Or even one of those small portable refrigerators.

 

[dastrick]

interesting.
So what if you leave it in the freezer and just run a cord to it?
That'd give you more time. Or even one of those small portable refrigerators.

Now that's a thought. I can plug it up to my laptop and set my laptop on top of the freezer.

 

[Steenamaroo]

AFAIK, the freezer trick is something to do with a degraded or broken coil, and not for the click of death, but hey...try it?
What's to lose right?

 

[RWhite]

interesting.
So what if you leave it in the freezer and just run a cord to it?
That'd give you more time. Or even one of those small portable refrigerators.

I've thought about that, but I'm not sure it would make a difference. The inside of the drive is going to heat up regardless. If you left it running in the freezer I think it would pretty quickly get wet from condensation, and that's not an ideal situation. Of course you're talking about an almost-dead or dead drive anyway, so it might be entertaining to try.

Just remember that even if it works, copy your data off quickly because it wont last.

 

[RWhite]

oops, double post...

 

[witzendoz]

Time is a factor in this, and it will only work ONCE (if it works at all), so you need everything to be ready.

I was told this, but when I tried it I only got a couple of folders off, so I thought why not try again, It was in the freezer about 6 times before I got all that was coming off. I learned on the second attempt that a curtain folder was on a damaged sector, so I left that along and went for some of the others.

I would still try the "give it a few knocks" trick as I think the freezer is more for damaged sectors and reading arms than stuck reading arms.

Have a look at how hard they work. here.

Cheers

Alan.

 

[Mo Facta]

A ticking drive, as has been said, is almost certain indication of imminent drive failure. A head crash is the worst thing possible to happen to a hard drive.

If you want to save your drive, I would recommend buying proper data recovery software like Data Recovery Pro. Or maybe find one that gives you a 30 day trial but it has to be serious software.

Also, the freezer trick has never worked for me, but give it a try as you may get lucky.

If the drive fails the only way to get the data back is to take it to a data recovery firm but that can cost anywhere from $500 to $1000 (maybe more).

Or, to stop the clicking, you can try this method, which always works for me:



Hope that helps.

Cheers

 

[TyphoidHippo]

cyclic redundancy check

CRC failures == dead drive guaranteed. Every single one of them dies eventually. Hope you have recent backups

What are all these pages of posts talking about? I kinda skimmed over and saw you're already freezing the drive trying to salvage it (guess that's a no for the recent backups, lol ). If I was you I'd put it in the freezer and just run dd over the whole thing. Copy it bit for bit and worry about making sense of the bits later, rather than trying to read them as files now (which is causing the OS to try to re-read the data repeatedly - hence - cyclic redundancy - and killing the drive ever more quickly). dd is, of course, completely free and can be run from any live cd.

Anything else unresolved?

 

[dastrick]

CRC failures == dead drive guaranteed. Every single one of them dies eventually. Hope you have recent backups

What are all these pages of posts talking about? I kinda skimmed over and saw you're already freezing the drive trying to salvage it (guess that's a no for the recent backups, lol ). If I was you I'd put it in the freezer and just run dd over the whole thing. Copy it bit for bit and worry about making sense of the bits later, rather than trying to read them as files now (which is causing the OS to try to re-read the data repeatedly - hence - cyclic redundancy - and killing the drive ever more quickly). dd is, of course, completely free and can be run from any live cd.

Anything else unresolved?

Well I haven't done anything to it, yet. And it's not making the clicking noise anymore. That was just a one time occurance.

I'm looking at buying some data recovery software, now. I priced a few places that specialize in data recovery and the cheapest is about $350...minimum.

What is dd?

 

[dastrick]

I'm running DrDD now. Probably not the same as what you were talking about, but here is a screen shot from it.





Every line has "Data Error cyclic redundancy check".

Not looking good.

 

[Saddle]

I would pull the drive out of the case and put it back in a PC as a second drive and run a chkdsk on it. Best option would be to clone it first with something like Maxblast 5 or DD_rescue and then repair the cloned drive. Depends on how valuable the info is on it.

 

[Steenamaroo]

I would pull the drive out of the case and put it back in a PC as a second drive and run a chkdsk on it. Best option would be to clone it first with something like Maxblast 5 or DD_rescue and then repair the cloned drive. Depends on how valuable the info is on it.

If it shows up and mounts, do this. What can you lose, well, apart from all your data.

If that fails, read here.

 

[somegeezer]

Well I haven't done anything to it, yet. And it's not making the clicking noise anymore. That was just a one time occurance.

I'm looking at buying some data recovery software, now. I priced a few places that specialize in data recovery and the cheapest is about $350...minimum.

What is dd?

That kinda stuff is more for if you have really important data that you cannot do without. If your data is worth that kinda money, go for it. Otherwise DIY with open-source software.

 

[dastrick]

So a new chapter to the saga.

I had a gig tonight. Since my new external drive is currently crapped out, I used my old trusty external drive. The drive that I have used for the past 2-3 years with zero problems on multiple PC's. I got everything ready to record, my drive was connected via firewire, opened my previously saved Reaper project from the drive and did a test run during sound check. For whatever reason the drive wasn't keeping up and was clicking & popping. So, I used the drive via USB (which I have done NUMEROUS times before). When I turned on the drive, guess what....................I get a "need to format drive" error.




So I guess there are a couple of good things and bad things.

Bad - another drive down

Good - I think I've narrowed it down down to my laptop's USB

Good (I think) - my drives are not physically damaged


So.............I can use software to recover this? Right?? Hopefully.



I'm glad I haven't froze my other drive, yet. I was close, though.


Some extra info....
This is a new laptop. I've only had it for about 1 month. It's a Lenovo ThinkPad W510, Win 7 Pro SP1 64 bit, 4 GB RAM, Intel core i7 Quad. The external drives worked via eSATA & firewire, but both drives crapped out when using USB on my laptop.


Thanks again for all of the help,

Dwayne