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

[dastrick]

I bought an external drive enclosure so I could take my SATA drive out of my desktop and use it as an external drive. I bought a new Siig JU-SA0612-S1 USB/eSATA external drive enclosure. I removed my HDD from my desktop and installed it in the Siig. It worked. I tried it on 3 different computers and it worked on all of them. Then after recording a live event, I get home, plug it into my desktop (which is one of the PC's that it had worked previously) and I get a message saying that the drive needs to be formatted. I tried it on the other two PC's and get the same message. I tried it with USB and eSATA and get the same message.

Does anyone know whay I would be getting this message?

I emailed Siig's support and they said a possible virus and that I need to scan the drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated because I have a LOT of stuff recorded on this drive.


Thanks,

Dwayne

 

[Mo Facta]

I am willing to bet that this is a file system problem and that the drive has somehow lost it's partition table info or has a damaged boot sector.

The easiest solution would be to use a data recovery program like Data Recovery Pro (there are many similar free programs as well) to retrieve the data off the hard drive and save it to another drive on the system. Then you could format the drive, which would re-write the partition table and then transfer the data back over.

For free data recovery programs, go here: http://lifehacker.com/5237503/five-best-free-data-recovery-tools

Another method, which may or may not work is to use TestDisk to rewrite the partition table.

Get TestDisk here: TestDisk Download - CGSecurity

Use this link for step by step instructions:

TestDisk Step By Step - CGSecurity

Please note that TestDisk is a command line utility.

What ever you do, please tread with caution.

Cheers

 

[dastrick]

Thanks Mo, I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[kip4]

i had the same thing with my daughters hard drive and thats what fixed it. I didnt do it myself a desicion i know regret since the cost was more than the drive itself. If i had known i would have given this a go.
Thanks for the tips Mo

 

[Lt. Bob]

not sure why you would even do that since a external drive is pretty cheap.

Good luck and let us know how that recovery thing does for ya'.

 

[dastrick]

Tried using Recuva and it won't scan it. It says "Data error (cyclic redundancy check)".


I've got to run out for a little while, but when I get back I'll get back on it.



Thanks for your help so far.

Dwayne

 

[somegeezer]

Tried using Recuva and it won't scan it. It says "Data error (cyclic redundancy check)".


I've got to run out for a little while, but when I get back I'll get back on it.



Thanks for your help so far.

Dwayne

You have to format before you recover. and you will most likely lose some data where the problems in the drive occured. I've had to do it twice to an old drive I had, before I gave up, sold it, and just got an internal drive to do its job. I just use flash drives for partable stuff now. No moving parts to get damaged. If you can take that drive out of its case and hook it up via SATA to your desktop computer, you may have a better chance of the computer being able to read it during boot up. [if you don't want to format it first that is!] Make sure a different drive has the OS on it though, and a third drive to backup to. Otherwise, I'd definitely recommend TestDisk.

 

[RWhite]

Here is the key bit of information in your post: "Then after recording a live event, I get home".

Did you plug it into some sort of proprietary recording hardware? Or just a standard PC? And if the later, what operating system? Could that device have formatted the drive with its own system? That would be a bit weird but its a possibility you need to eliminate.

 

[dastrick]

Here is the key bit of information in your post: "Then after recording a live event, I get home".

Did you plug it into some sort of proprietary recording hardware? Or just a standard PC? And if the later, what operating system? Could that device have formatted the drive with its own system? That would be a bit weird but its a possibility you need to eliminate.

I used my usual setup which is a Dell desktop running XP Pro, Reaper, and a Presonus Firestudio. I've used this setup many times with no issues. I took the drive to my home PC which is a self built running XP Pro.


I do remember when I plugged the drive in to the Dell it started the Auto Play which was reading through all of the files on the external drive and I did cancel it. I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it, but I remember doing it.

After the session was recorded in Reaper, I saved all of the files, ejected the drive, and shut everything down.

 

[dastrick]

You have to format before you recover. and you will most likely lose some data where the problems in the drive occured. I've had to do it twice to an old drive I had, before I gave up, sold it, and just got an internal drive to do its job. I just use flash drives for partable stuff now. No moving parts to get damaged. If you can take that drive out of its case and hook it up via SATA to your desktop computer, you may have a better chance of the computer being able to read it during boot up. [if you don't want to format it first that is!] Make sure a different drive has the OS on it though, and a third drive to backup to. Otherwise, I'd definitely recommend TestDisk.

So you use USB flash drives and then transfer to other drives? That's a good idea. I can get a USB 3.0 flash drive (since I have 3.0 on my laptop), which should be plenty fast enough, right?

 

[RWhite]

I used my usual setup which is a Dell desktop running XP Pro, Reaper, and a Presonus Firestudio. I've used this setup many times with no issues. I took the drive to my home PC which is a self built running XP Pro.

I do remember when I plugged the drive in to the Dell it started the Auto Play which was reading through all of the files on the external drive and I did cancel it. I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it, but I remember doing it.

After the session was recorded in Reaper, I saved all of the files, ejected the drive, and shut everything down.

Running Autoplay is normal and stopping that should not cause any problems. Apparently just a flaky drive, or it got bumped too much on the way home, or something.

 

[dastrick]

Running Autoplay is normal and stopping that should not cause any problems. Apparently just a flaky drive, or it got bumped too much on the way home, or something.

I'm beginning to think that the drive is physically damaged. It makes a funny clicking noise when it's running.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Oooh,,,a clicking noise is certainly symptomatic of a physical failure.

This is pretty old but it describes it well enough.

Usually there's no return from clicking drive syndrome, but i do have an external drive that will click with an inadequate power supply.
That probably doesn't help you, but i thought it was worth mentioning.

Make sure the drive is flat and level. Even try setting it upside down (but don't rotate it while it's spinning).
If you're extremely lucky you might get it to work for a brief period, but honestly, I doubt it.

 

[Lt. Bob]

Oooh,,,a clicking noise is certainly symptomatic of a physical failure.

This is pretty old but it describes it well enough.

Usually there's no return from clicking drive syndrome, but i do have an external drive that will click with an inadequate power supply.
That probably doesn't help you, but i thought it was worth mentioning.

Make sure the drive is flat and level. Even try setting it upside down (but don't rotate it while it's spinning).
If you're extremely lucky you might get it to work for a brief period, but honestly, I doubt it.

and this is why I questioned taking the drive outta the PC and carrying it around.
Are external drives set up to be more robust when carting them around? A parking place for the heads I thought.

So I think instead of buy a casing and removing the HD from the 'puter, it would be better to just buy an entire external drive. You can get 'em for not a lot more than that case.
That doesn't help with this, of course, but in the future I think I'd bear that in mind.

 

[Steenamaroo]

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.

 

[Lt. Bob]

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.

and I don't know either.
I thought I'd read something about external drives having some sorta set up to make them more able to handle physical shocks but I could very well be mistaken.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Well, thanks Bob, whether you're right or wrong.
I recently broke down my desktop setup, and I do have a drive that I considered buying an enclosure for.
I'll certainly look into this now.

 

[dastrick]

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.

 

[Steenamaroo]

This is a long shot, and apologies if it has already been covered, but take it out of the enclosure and mount it internally again.

A broken drive shouldn't see any discrimination in activity over usb or sata, so maybe there's more to this?

 

[RWhite]

I'm beginning to think that the drive is physically damaged. It makes a funny clicking noise when it's running.

That is probably what is known as "the click of death".

If you open up a hard drive, it has a number of smooth round metal platters that spin at a very high speed. There is a small mechanical arm connected to a read-write head that looks similar to an arm on an old style turn table. Sometimes that arm becomes damaged, it can't move accurately, and it makes a soft "click" as it tries to move. Now sometimes drives can "click" for some time before they fail, but usually when you hear that sound it is too late, the drive has failed.

Hopefully you have at least some of the data backed up. If the drive is still under warranty, and it was bought retail, you will want to return it to the manufacturer directly.

There is one last chance to recover data from a drive that has been damaged like this, but its a little weird so I wont describe it unless you are desperate.