I/O device error

[hotspur]

Anyone ever had a message after plugging in an external hard drive I/O device error? Have most data backed up on another,but this USB powered one looks like its had it. Interesting I can still scan the device and it acknowledge that its plugged in. Any chance of recovering data?

Thanks for any advice.

[bobson]

Hi Chris

Try restarting your PC while External HD is plugged in, this way it might read/load it properly.
Try unplugging other devices from USB ports and then plug in your External HD only. Usually keyboard and mouse you can leave plugged in. But many other devices such as WiFi Netgear stick or similar can cause it not to work.
If that doesnt work, try plugging it on different computer and see if it works.

If none of it work read this:

http://www.tech-faq.com/io-device-error.html

cheers

[hotspur]

Thank you Bob I will try your suggestion :)

[sil]

Sounds like you just unplugged the drive recently instead of unmounting the device from the system tray like you should. Windows keeps some write operations open an unfinished until you unmont the drive which is when it finishes, to avoid too many read/writes to the drive. Just unplugging the drive leaves these half written causing data corruption.