Problem with USB HD and W'7

[bojan]

I have a problem with both of mine USB HD's... W'7 Pro says "Can't be accessed, needs formatting" and XP access one of them without problems but can't access the other one (both are NTFS).
Interestingly, I am sure I had no problems with W'7 Home.
I suspect my TV (running on Linux) will access both without problems.

Is there a way to avoid transferring files to another drive and formatting?

[ZeroID]

How old are the drives ?
How much handling, travel, etc have they gone through ?
How many times have they been reused, ie delete files, load new etc. ?

We chuck out HDD's from engineer laptops at about 3 years because they have a rough life in cars and on site premises. They do not last forever and a clean up and reformat is good practice for USB HDD's.

[luka]

Bojan, are the drives USB-powered?

If not it could it be a power issue. I have seen computers (typing on one right now) that struggle to provide adequate power the the USB HD causing similar issues. Connecting the drive to a different USB port sometimes helps, or using a power supply for the drive or even connecting via external powered USB hub.

[redbeard]

Hi Bojan, sometimes if the drive is disconnected from the pc without clicking the remove device safely thingy, data can be corrupted a little. Try using checkdisk (chkdsk.exe), on the drive and it will attempt to fix any errors.

Cheers,

Damien

[LostInSp_ce]

Most likely what's happened but before doing this maybe try a few of these things if you haven't already.

A. Try connecting it with a different usb cable.
B. As previously suggested connect it to another USB sport or another computer/operating system.
C. Check for viruses.
D. Try reassigning the drives with new drive letters.
E. Use the chkdsk option.

If still unsuccessful after all that, then it's time for either recovery software, formatting or new drives.

[bojan]

Hi guys,
Thank you - powering from USB port is not an issue, HD's have separate PS - HD's are 1 and 2TB units, Western Digital (from Officeworks).

However, I know that OS may be - once I had accident, HD fell on the carpet from the table- and half of it became lost for a while - I managed to retrieve data using the computer and Linux OS.

[bojan]

I can access both HD's with my Set-top-box (presumably running Linux)

[sil]

it'll be because you unplugged without using the tray icon to disconnect. Windows added this "feature" as it doesn't actually save changes to the drive when you edit a file, instead it caches the changes needed and opens a "lock file". using the tray icon forces windows to write all the changes properly and remove the lock file. Unplugging the usb device means only partial changes were ever made and so you get corrupt drive. its very common. chkdsk fixes it but you may have to switch to another machine.

[bojan]

Hi Sil,
Actually, both drives are accessible with TV, set top box.. only one is accessible from XP machine.

W'7 complains for both of them and wants to format, which is annoying.
I will try chkdsk from XP to see if that can help...

[bojan]

And yes, both drives are accessible via Netcomm router (after f/w upgrade).