# External HDD upon connecting gives message need to format



## ajayritik (May 6, 2015)

My friend's External HDD when connected gives a message the drive needs to be formatted.
He has some important files in the HDD like Personal Videos pictures which he would like to access.
Can someone please suggest how this can be recovered?
Its WD External HDD.


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## DK_WD (May 6, 2015)

ajayritik said:


> My friend's External HDD when connected gives a message the drive needs to be formatted.
> He has some important files in the HDD like Personal Videos pictures which he would like to access.
> Can someone please suggest how this can be recovered?
> Its WD External HDD.



Hi [MENTION=29208]ajayritik[/MENTION],

Based on your post, I'd like to check with you, have you tried to connect the HDD to another PC? Is it working ok from the existing PC? If yes, please backup your existing data. Did you run the antivirus scan recently for the PC? Can you see the HDD used space in “Properties”? Could you give me some details about that? For the meantime, I’d suggest you some basic troubleshooting steps that may help you to solve the issue.

1) Go into Disk Management and in the bottom-right panel look for a ribbon which labelled as RAW and has no drive name.
2) Right-click on that & choose Change Drive Letter and Path.
3) Click Add and accept the default letter or choose preferred letter from the list.
4) Click OK.

For data recovery, you can try the 3rd party data recovery software's.

Example: Recuva and Hd sentinel.

Hope it helps.


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## ajayritik (May 6, 2015)

DK_WD said:


> Hi [MENTION=29208]ajayritik[/MENTION],
> 
> Based on your post, I'd like to check with you, have you tried to connect the HDD to another PC? Is it working ok from the existing PC? If yes, please backup your existing data. Did you run the antivirus scan recently for the PC? Can you see the HDD used space in “Properties”? Could you give me some details about that? For the meantime, I’d suggest you some basic troubleshooting steps that may help you to solve the issue.
> 
> ...



As mentioned in the first post this External HDD belongs to my friend and he asked me to check what the problem is.
He already informed me that whenever he tries to connect it to his laptop it gives message that the HDD needs to be formatted.
Yesterday night when I connected it to my PC it gave me the same message.
I can't see the HDD listed in *My Computer*

As mentioned unless I can see the drive listed in My Computer I don't think I will be able to take back up.
Are you sure I can take backup from that HDD without it not showing by using the mentioned softwares.
Also I would try the steps mentioned by you once I'm at home.


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## ajayritik (May 7, 2015)

Guys any ideas, suggestions?


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## bssunilreddy (May 7, 2015)

ajayritik said:


> Guys any ideas, suggestions?



External HDD has gone kaput I think...


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## ajayritik (May 7, 2015)

bssunil said:


> External HDD has gone kaput I think...



I feel it necessarily may not have gone kaput. But the data in it may have gone kaput.


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## $hadow (May 8, 2015)

ajayritik said:


> I feel it necessarily may not have gone kaput. But the data in it may have gone kaput.



Once kaput it is always a kaput 
Data might be recovered with some softwares, but full recovery chances are very low.


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## ajayritik (May 8, 2015)

$hadow said:


> Once kaput it is always a kaput
> Data might be recovered with some softwares, but full recovery chances are very low.



I thought Kaput means when I connect the HDD and the PC doesn't recognize anything which may indicate kaput.
But here in this case if I connect it to PC it shows up message that drive needs to be formatted.
That was my logic.
now how will I recover the files.


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## rhitwick (May 9, 2015)

I've one suggestion, its crazy but might just work.

When prompted for format, go ahead and format it.
BUT and a big BUT do not write anything to it.

After the successful format the HDD would show up properly in system.
Now use a good data recovery software (Recuva - free) to analyze and recover data from it.

As only one wipe has happened and no write operation has been executed the data bits would be intact in the drive. 

You should be able to recover data without issue.

I've done this same thing if not with such large data but with a 64GB pen drive. Worked like charm.

Beware, if you are following my advice do it in your own risk.


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## $hadow (May 9, 2015)

ajayritik said:


> I thought Kaput means when I connect the HDD and the PC doesn't recognize anything which may indicate kaput.
> But here in this case if I connect it to PC it shows up message that drive needs to be formatted.
> That was my logic.
> now how will I recover the files.


 [MENTION=870]rhitwick[/MENTION]  has given a good tip. Since you are on the verge of loosing your data why not give this method a shot.


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