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  #1  
Old June 13th, 2012, 06:01 PM
Taciturnity Taciturnity is offline
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"You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it"

"You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it"

Any help appriciated. I have an external USB 3.0 Western Digital HDD that's less than a year old and is now giving me an error everytime I plug it in to my Win7 boxes. I've plugged it into THREE different Win7 boxes now, same error pops up after about a minute. Also, if I leave it plugged in, this same message will pop up, duplicating itself every other minute. It also makes the USB notification sound as if it was unplugged/plugged in again.

History: For about 2 months before this happened it would give me "write delay failed" message every now and then. Reseating it would fix it for a while.

Things I've tried:
1. Disk Management - will show it a split second before this error pops up, as the F: drive, but I cannot do anything to it as far as reassigning drive letter. Options are grayed out when right clicking on it.
2. Tried using ISObuster while loaded in Win7. It never sees the drive, it's never an option on the drive selection drop-down, even while this error is still on the screen. Same thing with R-studio
3. Plugged in drive, booted to Hiren's BootCD (a version from a few years ago) and it also never lists it as a drive that anything can be done with. It gives is a letter, but can't perform any action.
4. Booted into SuperGrub, but couldn't get it to do much for me, not sure what I should have tried.
5. Booted into an older version of Gparted bootCD. When loading, it sees the drive along with the others, but gives an I/O error and then says File System: Unknown instead of NTFS or Fat32.
6. Tried taking the "serial-ATA" drive out of the USB enclosure in case the enclosure was the issue. I found that it doesn't appear to have an adapter, and has a type of connector I've never seen before! Not sure what to do with it. Pic here.

Can you guys think of any utility or way to recover any of the data that was on this drive? Would formatting it eliminate any possibility to recover any of the data using some advanced programs? Any insight is appreciated. Thanks!
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  #2  
Old June 13th, 2012, 09:11 PM
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Murf Murf is offline
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Welcome to CTH

The drive is a SATA-USB 3.0 500GB 9.5 inch 5400rpm. I would run WD Diagnostic software to see if the drive itself is OK.

HERE

In the pix appears there is a Adapter plugged it. Does it look like it will come off?
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  #3  
Old June 15th, 2012, 03:49 AM
MAJOR3058 MAJOR3058 is offline
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you may have to format it and then recover your data. Formatting may be your only way to get it actually functioning again. And yes you can recover data still after formatting. Some programs will specifically have the option to recover formatted drives. Ive recovered a formatted 500gb drive a couple of years abck. I used easy recovery professional. It was a long and tedious process made worse by no original titles on the files so I basicaly had to just recover 1000s of files then weed through them to find what was what.

Last edited by MAJOR3058; June 15th, 2012 at 03:54 AM.
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  #4  
Old June 18th, 2012, 08:51 PM
Taciturnity Taciturnity is offline
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Hey guys,
Thanks for all the help thus far. I was finally able to get the WD Diagnostics program to recongize it on the 3rd attempt. Now that it's out of the enclosure and right next to me, I hear it make a loud clicking noise about once a minute. This might be a bigger issue. Either way, I was able to scan it twice with the WD Diag and it failed both times pretty quickly!

First test attempt:
"Quick Test on drive 3 did not complete!
Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97
(Unknown Test)
SMART self-test did not complete on drive 3!"

Second attempt at the same test I got further, 2047 sectors out of 97607583 and received "Too many bad sectors detected."

Sounds like this might be something more physical with the drive. Do I still have the option to even format and recover, or is the drive hardware broken? Should I try a program like Spinrite or what am I looking at here now? Thanks!
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  #5  
Old June 19th, 2012, 04:04 AM
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MaDef MaDef is offline
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The drive is shot, is it still under warranty? if so, RMA it.

As for recovering data, You may be able to use the "freezer method" to get any data that might be recoverable.

The freezer method is pretty simple. put the drive in a zip-loc bag and place in the freezer overnight. take it out and connect to a pc and try using file recovery software to grab as much data as possible. I've had decent luck in the past, using PhotoRec
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  #6  
Old June 19th, 2012, 06:42 AM
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vahne2k vahne2k is offline
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Very Interesting... Can you explain more about the Freezer Method? I was really eager to know how it affects the HDD when you put it on a freezer.

Thanks...
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  #7  
Old June 19th, 2012, 03:10 PM
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MaDef MaDef is offline
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Quote:
I was really eager to know how it affects the HDD when you put it on a freezer.
It get's really cold.

The clicking you hear from the drive is probably caused by the platters having swelled or warped (due to heat being generated by the drive), so they aren't spinning correctly. Putting the drive in a freezer makes the platters shrink back to normal, and gives you a little time to access the drive to get files before the platters heat up and swell/warp again.
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  #8  
Old June 20th, 2012, 01:45 AM
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vahne2k vahne2k is offline
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Cool.. Ill try these methods on my other drives that have these kinds of problems.. Thanks for an interesting Info..

Cheers,
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  #9  
Old June 28th, 2012, 08:13 PM
Taciturnity Taciturnity is offline
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Update:
I put the drive in the freezer inside a static-free bag, and then inside a sealed ziploc. Did this for 2 hours and then for 24 hours with the same result. Both times when I plugged it in, it acted the same. 45 seconds after plugging it into a USB port on the back of the computer it recognized the drive but went straight back to the "You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it" that I originally reported. It is still making a one click sound every 2 or 3 minutes, but I don't hear the drive spin down. It seems like it has to be the file or disk structure and not something physical. Can't RMA it.
I guess my only other option is to reformat it and see if any recovery program can find the data after a reformat. Let me know if anyone else has any ideas, thanks!
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  #10  
Old June 28th, 2012, 10:16 PM
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MaDef MaDef is offline
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before formatting try using PhotoRec it is a file recovery software. (it ignores file formats, so if there is data, it will try to recover it)
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  #11  
Old June 29th, 2012, 06:58 PM
Taciturnity Taciturnity is offline
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Thank you MaDef for the suggestion. PhotoRec was the first program that was able to even recognize the drive as something scan-able, so that's an improvement. Unfortunately I ran it twice, about 20 min each time and it wasn't able to recover any files. Any advanced settings you recommend?
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  #12  
Old June 29th, 2012, 10:36 PM
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MaDef MaDef is offline
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You can try enabling brute force and keep corrupted files, but I don't think that will gain you anything. You can also try using Testdisk, on the off chance that the problem isn't the disk itself, but a partition table/MBR/MFT problem.
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  #13  
Old July 2nd, 2012, 10:44 AM
MickG MickG is offline
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You need to format the disk.....

Sometimes this can just be a permissions problem.
It's worth going into "Computer" or "My Computer" and right clicking on the affected drive and then clicking on "Properties".
Click on the "Security" tab. Check out the permissions that are set for ALL the options listed (Users, system etc etc) and grant additional permissions as appropriate. Click "Apply" after each set of changes.
You need to think about the implications of changing permissions but if you are dealing with (for example) an external hard drive, this can often resolve this issue.
Check out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...uch-recognized
Look at the post by "Starkatz"
I have had similar drive problems and have found that Windows has changed permissions on the drive without my knowing about it. Changing the permissions has resolved the problem.
Hope this helps,
MickG
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  #14  
Old July 19th, 2012, 05:04 PM
Taciturnity Taciturnity is offline
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UPDATE:
After having the drive just sit around for a few weeks, I plugged it in last night to try a new program (EaseUS). The drive seemed to warm up a lot more than usual and seemed to maybe be spinning or vibrating more than usual as well. Waiting a few minutes for the usual message that the drive must be formatted... when it ran the autoplay options and actually showed up in My Computer! I was able to browse some of the folders for a few seconds when it disappeared again as if unplugged. This repeated 3 times, with a few minutes in between each time. I never had enough time to copy anything off of it, but now it seems like it's not a partition/file system problem but back to something physical.
After 20 minutes total, it then started giving the usual "drive must be formatted" message again! Frustrating. Anyone have any ideas of what else I can try since the freezer trick didn't do anything? Maybe heat would help it?
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