External HD question????

Question

Please help . My computer went kaput (MB). Well i had them (Computerpeople) put the HD in an external HD case so i could still use it, well ive hooked it up and it downloaded the drivers and said it needs formated.??? what excactly does formatted mean? cause it says format type,
(quick )erase, or
full
I donot wanna erase the HD it has everything on it,pics music,ya know so please tell me what to do..

Its a laptop W windows ME. the hd kit says it supports 98,me xp..the hd i put in the external enclosure has xp on it?? the computerguy says it would work??? is he wrong??

the Mother Board went kuput on desktop copmuter,had Hardrive removed ,put the HD w/ xp in external enclosure. trying to use external w/ xp on laptop w/ ME

Answer 1

Let me get this right, it says you need to format it, in order to be able to use it? The only thing I can think of is if you were trying to boot from it, it might say that, but Windows is telling you this? If you were using Windows XP you shouldn't even have needed to install drivers, it should have just worked. Format means it would completely wipe the drive, typically done when you either want to sell the drive or reinstall Windows.

Is the drive working now? I just can't fathom this... unless you aren't using Windows XP. What operating system are you using right now?

I'm asking because if the drive had Windows XP on it, it was most likely formatted as a NTFS drive. If you plugged the drive into a Windows 98/ME machine, it would not recognize the NTFS format (probably, it's been a LONG time since I've used any Windows 9x OS) and would want to format it.

Well, that's your problem then. Windows ME will not recognize a drive that had Windows XP on it that was formatted as NTFS. If the XP drive had been formatted as FAT32 then Windows ME would not have had a problem with it. But, since it isn't recognizing it, it's a safe assumption that the drive was formatted as NTFS. I think the "computer guy" assumed that it was FAT32 (though how he could have missed that is beyond me) or that you were going to plug it into another Windows XP machine. If it were a blank drive (non-formatted) it would indeed be compatible with all the operating systems you listed. But, as I said, the NTFS format is compatible only with Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS can read NTFS formatted volumes but not write to them.

Get access to a PC that has Windows XP on it, plug the drive it, pull all the files you want off of it, burn them to a CD or stick them on a flash drive and transfer them to your laptop. Or get yourself a new laptop that has Windows XP on it. (I don't know how much you are willing to spend in this pursuit).

To everyone who's answered this question, it's not a drive problem or a USB problem, it's the simple fact that Windows ME cannot read a NTFS formatted drive.

That gives me another thought. While you can safely convert a FAT32 volume to NTFS the same is not true for NTFS to FAT32, in fact, it's dangerous, it may result in data loss. Partition Magic among other programs has the ability to convert a NTFS volume back to FAT32 but it may result in damaging files and you may end up having to reformat the drive after all.

The only answer and the only correct answer is to plug the drive into a Windows XP or 2000 based system and see if the drive is recognized, I'm 99% sure it will be. If it is not then I could only take a wild guess as to what is wrong with it.

Answer 2

Try these simple steps, Plug in the external drive and check if windows can recognize the drive as say the D: or E: drive. If not, make sure its plugged directly into the wall socket (not through a backup UPC or extension cord, just to make sure your getting enough power, external HD are picky!). Usually its the actual wattage of power that doesnt let you read whats on the HD. So try that, reboot a couple times, plugging in the external drive before and maybe after reboot and try to plug in the HD after you boot up.... if you try all this, and you still cant see the external HD, bring it back in to the computerpeople....

Answer 3

This question is a bit confusing:
"(MB)" Motherboard?
have you replaced the Computer? or the Motherboard?

To answer the "formatted" question -
Disk formatting is the only process of preparing a hard disk or other storage medium for use with the file system (FAT, NTFS, UFS, etc.) of an operating system. A variety of utilities and programs exist for this task; pictured to the right is the iconic FORMAT.COM of MS-DOS and PC-DOS.

Formatting will making any existing data unusable. If you have another computer . I suggest adding the external drive to it and copying the important data (pics, music, docs).

Answer 4

Are we talking Mac or PC here? What OS version? Are you using an older computer and the computer that went kaput had a newer OS on it and file system? Don't format anything if you want to keep what is on there.

Answer 5

formatting is deleting the hard disk.
so now it depends on what file system you're using on the external disk and what file system the computer has where the external disk is hooked on.
PC with NTFS file system should recognise the external HDD. but if you have FAT16 or FAT32 on the PC and the external HDD is NTFS, the PC will not recognise that file system.

Answer 6

If you didn't back up all the files before you downloaded the drivers there is a good chance it's lost anyway.....do a full format and start fresh, sorry to be the one to give you bad news.